Financial Risk Checks for Gambling

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I am not renowned for brisk speeches, but I will try my best. I am sure the people of Market Rasen are delighted to see you taking such an interest in this debate.

I start by referring people to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests: I have occasionally accepted hospitality from the betting industry and the horseracing industry; I am an unpaid board member of the Racehorse Owners Association; and as I always mention on these occasions, I am the modest owner of racehorses and the owner of modest racehorses.

I thank the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for opening the debate and the Petitions Committee as a whole for allowing it to take place. I particularly thank Nevin Truesdale from the Jockey Club for launching this petition and everyone who signed it, enabling this debate to take place. I the Racing Post, which not only did a tremendous job getting behind the petition but has done sterling work in highlighting the damage that the proposed affordability checks could do to punters and the sport of horseracing. I also commend the Minister, my constituency neighbour, who inherited this policy and whose engagement with all stakeholders has been exemplary.

Let me make it clear at the outset that I am speaking up for two groups today: one is the horseracing industry, but first and foremost I am speaking up for punters—the people who have been largely ignored in this long-running debate and tug-of-war over affordability checks. They often get caught up in the crossfire of the arguments between the well-funded betting industry and the well-funded anti-gambling campaigners.

I have no intention of speaking up for bookmakers, partly because most of them in the industry are big enough to speak up for themselves, and partly because their position on stake restrictions is inconsistent—that is the kindest word I can use. On the one hand, bookmakers say it is wrong for the state to restrict how much people can gamble; on the other hand, though, they are the most guilty of all of restricting the stakes of punters who have the audacity to back too many winners, often to pennies rather than pounds. I have warned them time and again that trying to have their cake and eat it on punter restrictions would backfire. Until they abandon that anti-punter mentality, what they say on this issue will always be subject to some level of ridicule.

The principle that people should only bet what they can afford is not a controversial one. It is the first piece of advice that any of us would give to anyone who starts betting. However, what the Government and the Gambling Commission are proposing is completely unacceptable. They propose frictionless checks for people who have a net spend of just £125 over a rolling 30-day period, or £500 in a year, with enhanced checks taking place for anyone with a net loss of £1,000 in 24 hours or £2,000 over 90 days.

I have a number of concerns about that approach, both practically and in principle. I find it somewhat offensive that the Government and the Gambling Commission believe that there is something inherently distasteful about betting. If that is not the case, why are the Government proposing that type of affordability check just on gambling? Why do they not ask every retailer in the country to carry out similar checks on customers to ensure that they can afford to buy whatever they come to the counter with? Is the Minister really claiming that nobody spends more on alcohol than is good for them, more on shoes than they should, or more on holidays than they can actually afford?

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend does not even need to talk about products that are that addictive. As one of my constituents has pointed out, no one checks on him if he spends £150 on a dinner for two people. Would he accept that, even if the principle is conceded that there should be some checks, the level at which this has been set is far too low?

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend, as I happily do on most things. Of course people spend more than they should on all those other things, but the Government are snobbishly only treating punters as some kind of pariah, which I do not appreciate.

In Parliament, we should stand up for people’s freedoms. I was not elected to Parliament to stop everyone else doing all the things I do not happen to like myself, but some Members seem to think their job is to do nothing other than that. It is unacceptable that the Government, the Gambling Commission and the bookmakers will basically, between them, decide how much each individual punter can afford to spend on their betting, and the punter gets virtually no say whatsoever. It is completely outrageous. The Conservative party used to believe in individual freedom and individual responsibility, and some of us still do.

If we asked how much responsibility each group should take for determining how much somebody can afford to spend on betting, I doubt anyone would say that the individual concerned should have 0% responsibility, but that is the route down which we are in danger of going. It is absurd to think that bookmakers and regulators should be able to decide how much each individual person in the country should be allowed to spend on betting. When people open an online betting account or the next time they log in, perhaps they should be forced to enter how much they want to limit their spend over a fixed period. The responsibility for ensuring that they do not go over that should rest with the bookmaker, but not the decision as to how much they can afford in the first place.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

Does it not strike my hon. Friend that there is a degree of hypocrisy, when a large proportion of problem gamblers who really are in great difficulty are just using national lottery scratchcards? The figure is about four times higher than that for those who gamble on horseracing.

[Philip Davies]

I know that my hon. Friend is a big supporter of Windsor racecourse in his constituency. I will come on to that later. I hope you will think about the interventions I am taking, Sir Edward. I do not want to get in trouble.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

You can have injury time if you want, Mr Davies.

[Philip Davies]

Thanks.

Thankfully, readers of the Racing Post and punters still believe in the timeless Conservative principle of individual responsibility. In a recent poll of punters carried out by the Racing Post, when asked who they thought was best placed to assess whether their betting is affordable, 96.6% said that they were, 1.8% said the Gambling Commission, 1% said bookmakers and 0.6% said the Government. If that is not a giant raspberry to the proposed affordability checks, I do not know what is.

Everyone knows that the problem gambling rates in the UK are extremely low, and certainly do not justify anything remotely close to what is being proposed. However, it is also pretty obvious to most people with common sense that the affordability checks are likely to make things worse for people with a gambling addiction, rather than better. Does anyone seriously think that anyone who has a serious gambling addiction, if and when they are told by online bookmakers that they are no longer allowed to bet with them, will just stop betting completely? It is pretty obvious that those people will do all they can to carry on with their addiction, and that will mean going to the black market where there are no controls on people’s behaviour.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to have his say later, and I am anxious about Sir Edward’s strictures.

The Gambling Commission has always said that the threat from the black market is overstated, while at the same time, like most quangos, telling the Government that it needs more money to tackle it. I hope the Minister will make it clear that he does not underestimate the threat from the black market. Only today, the front page of the Racing Post shows the results of a special investigation into The Post Bookmakers—an unregulated firm with 1,300 customers—which said it was expecting a ridiculously busy Cheltenham and recommended that a customer deposited as much as they could. How on earth can making it more likely for people to go to firms like that possibly help to tackle problem gambling?

The wonderful sport of horseracing derives much of its income from the gambling industry, so the more people go to the black market, the less money there is for the sport of horseracing. British racing is the best and most prestigious in the world. It is the second biggest spectator sport in the UK after football, brings a huge amount of foreign investment into the country and is a huge part of the rural economy. It also provides a huge amount of pleasure to millions of people across the country. The Government cannot possibly allow themselves to introduce measures—however well meaning —that will have a devastating effect on this great sport.

Some 24,000 racehorse owners in the UK invest more than £500 million into the rural economy. They pay £32 million a month in training fees, employing over 350 racehorse trainers who employ some 80,000 people. The least they should be allowed is to have a bet on their own horses as well. We cannot allow decisions to be made that put that investment at risk.

However much I would like the Government and the Gambling Commission to abandon the affordability check policy, I have not been here so long without accepting that some battles are impossible to win. I therefore accept that the Government may feel that they have invested too much in the affordability check debate to be able to abandon it completely. I have suggestions for the Minister that might help make the policy less bad, and I hope he will consider them.

The Government have said that they want financial checks to be frictionless, but as envisaged the checks would be anything but. First of all, will the Minister pledge to ensure that any checks will be based on net deposits, not gross deposits? That would make a material difference. Secondly, it is envisaged that enhanced affordability checks will be based on current account turnover, or CATO, data. That is used primarily by loan industries to determine whether a customer can afford a loan. It focuses on money flowing in and money flowing out of an individual’s account. That is precisely the wrong kind of test, as it second-guesses in a subjective manner what someone can afford.

CATO does not consider financial vulnerability and is extremely unhelpful when it comes to people with irregular money flows such as the self-employed, entrepreneurs and individuals with high wealth but low income. Will the Minister pledge not to use CATO data for those reasons? If he insists on going ahead with affordability checks, will he use SCOR data instead, from the Steering Committee on Reciprocity? SCOR data is much more appropriate as it shows if someone is showing signs of financial vulnerability and distress. It flags people who are falling behind on the rent or those with missed mortgage payments, defaults on loans and so on. Crucially, the checks are entirely frictionless and do not discriminate against any group, such as the self-employed.

When the Government envisaged affordability checks, surely that is what they had in mind—checking that people were not resorting to gambling to try to win the mortgage payment that they had fallen behind on, rather than trying to second-guess what each individual could afford to spend on gambling. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that suggestion. Will he also make clear where anti-money laundering checks will fit in with the affordability check regime?

If the Government insist on affordability checks, I have another suggestion: to differentiate between games of skill and games of chance—that is, to separate sports betting from online slots and roulette. Horseracing is not a game of chance and in my view should not be treated as such. Incredibly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) made clear, the Government envisage that some games of chance will be treated more favourably than games of skill. I do not think that the national lottery will be subject to affordability checks—it cannot possibly be right that people who bet on horseracing will but people who bet on the lottery will not. Will the Minister confirm that that will not be the case or give an explanation of why it will?

Not including the national lottery in such measures would indicate a disregard for the people losing money and an interest only in the people winning money. If the concern is about problem gamblers, why is it okay if they have lost all their money to the lottery, just because that money goes to good causes rather than bookmakers? The national lottery must be included in all the measures in the White Paper.

I end, Sir Edward, where I began: by urging the Minister to look after the interests of all punters to ensure that nothing is done to threaten the horseracing industry, which will never forgive the Government otherwise, and to stand up for the key Conservative principle of individual freedom and individual responsibility. It is not too late to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank the right hon. Member, my friend in this context, for his intervention. He has done such good work on this issue, and on this point he is absolutely right.

I have become involved in gambling reform only in the past six years or so, following the death of one of my constituents, Jack Ritchie, as a result of gambling addiction. What I learned from the tragedy of Jack’s death was that often when people take their own lives it is because they are overwhelmed not by gambling debt, but by the addiction itself. When I talked to Jack’s parents, they were very clear—this echoes a point that the right hon. Member has made—that if there had been checks, balances and preventive measures in place at an early stage of Jack’s journey into addiction, it could have transformed the tragic outcome when he took his life.

Jack is not alone. According to Public Health England, over 400 people take their lives each year as a result of gambling. A recent Gambling Commission survey, which I think has been mentioned, found that 2.5% of the population—over 1.5 million people—score over eight on the problem gambling severity index.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman has repeated this line that over 400 people a year die of suicide as a result of gambling—a figure that has been discredited many times and with which the Gambling Commission certainly would not align itself. Can he tell us how he has arrived at that figure? What methodology has he gone through? I think that when he does explain it, he will realise that it is a discredited figure.

[Paul Blomfield]

I was happy to take an intervention, in contrast with the hon. Member’s approach earlier, but I was simply citing the figures provided by Public Health England. I respect Public Health England, as I am sure—

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Paul Blomfield]

No, I will not.

[Philip Davies]

The figures have been discredited, and it does not accept them any more.

[Paul Blomfield]

I am prepared to accept the figures from an established, respectable national body.

[Philip Davies]

But it does not accept those figures any more.

[Paul Blomfield]

I do not think that this is—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the black market is a real threat. The tobacco industry may have made a lot of it, but it was because people were turning to the black market. That cannot be denied. A committee I chaired years ago looked into that in some detail. Of course, people did go to the black market, and they are likely to go to the black market because they want to have a frictionless bet that does not cause them a load of trouble. They are already doing it, and we are getting evidence of that regularly.

[Philip Davies]

As ever, my hon. Friend speaks up very well for the racing industry. Was he, like me, surprised to hear the SNP appear to argue that it does not want any income for racecourses from the gambling industry? Does he agree that people at Perth, Musselburgh, Hamilton, Ayr and Kelso will be very interested to hear that that seems to be the view of the SNP?

[Mr Robertson]

My hon. Friend tempts me to go down a road that I am not quite sure I want to go down. The SNP is capable of speaking for itself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Conor McGinn]

I am delighted to have given the right hon. Gentleman that opportunity.

I want to be emphatic about this so that we are very clear: I am here to speak on behalf of Haydock Park racecourse in my constituency in St Helens; I am here to speak up for the 100,000 people who signed this petition—decent, honourable, good taxpayers in this country who have a concern about this issue and a love for horseracing; and I am here to say emphatically that the whole of the horseracing industry, which, if I might cheekily say so, is not widely known for its unanimity on issues, speaks with one voice about its concerns on this issue. I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group with the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), and this is an interest and an issue that unites people in all parties and across the House.

I want to step back a little and look at the bigger issues. Many of the points that I wish to make have been made already. I furiously agree with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on this—as I do, I fear, on too many issues—and he made a lot of the points that I wish to make.

[Philip Davies]

That admission is far more damaging to the hon. Gentleman’s reputation than it is to mine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George.

As is clear from the speeches that have been made so far, there are two aspects to this debate: the question of the regulation of gambling, and the question of the protection of horseracing. The first, I think, requires action, because there is a significant social problem, which is a point that I will come on to and that others, especially the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees), made so eloquently.

The second question is that of a debate between the gambling industry and horseracing. We have to differentiate there. After all, the gambling industry, or much of it, is now online, and much of it is now based in Gibraltar, so it is not even paying taxes, whereas the horseracing industry is indigenous, although it is also partly—this inference was made about horseracing—funded by the gambling industry. Yes, that is to some extent a historical anachronism, but it was no doubt done deliberately so that people would not see gambling going to the black market, with other unregulated aspects, whether that was pitch and toss, dogfights or illegal boxing matches. That ensured that a revenue stream went from gambling into horseracing, and that is fundamental.

As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) said correctly, people might think that horseracing is flush. It is not. I, along with others, declare an interest in having horseracing within my constituency, because I represent Musselburgh. Musselburgh has had its challenges, Musselburgh had to be sold and has now been bought by Chester.

At one stage, it even looked like there might not be a buyer, because it is not as if people are lining up as they are for English Premier League—or even Scottish Premiership—football teams. There were redundancies there—I had to intervene and speak to the management about them—but they were done reluctantly, and we have had to accord to that. There are challenges in that sector. Some of this—this is the subliminal aspect—is about the gambling industry reducing the amount of money that it puts into horseracing, because it does not have the same involvement in funding football or anything else, other than the money that it makes from it.

Returning to the primary issue, there is a problem with gambling. We must recognise that people suffer. I am not some libertarian who thinks it is all just free market, with people deciding according to their free will. It is a social problem, exactly the same as alcohol and drugs. We do not un-regulate them and say, “Consume what you like.” We ensure that we know what the product is, and supervise, tax and regulate it. We can argue—I certainly do—that we sometimes go too far on drugs and not far enough on alcohol, but we must ensure that we regulate.

We must recognise that gambling has transformed. I am a child of the ’60s, when gambling was basically done in a bookies. They were foreboding and intimidating places where working men—perhaps in a flat cap—went, where women would not be seen, and that respectable men would probably not wish to be seen going into. They kept very limited hours. When I was young, they always seemed quite intimidatory. I now have a flat in Dunbar, and I can look across the high street and see a bookies. It is open early in the morning until late at night. People of all ages, genders, ethnicities go in—far too many, I must say, much as I am not opposed to people enjoying a flutter.

The whole nature of the industry has changed. As Justice Secretary in Scotland, I remember being briefed by Dr Reith from Glasgow, a world expert in gambling and how gambling has changed. People can now literally lose not just their shirt, but their house overnight if they have multiple credit cards, so there must be regulation. The nature of who gambles has also changed, because ethnic minorities who might not have gone into the working-class, working man’s bookies are now going elsewhere. I remember hearing that in Scotland we had significant difficulties with Polish people and eastern Europeans who were working in the casinos. They socialised in the casinos and therefore developed a gambling problem, because that was where they hung about. Since women and other people who would not have otherwise have gone into a bookies are doing so, we must target and address gambling. We must address the demand, which is why we must look at regulating the sponsorship of football teams and some of the television advertisements that are basically pushed in our faces—we want to watch the football but are inconvenienced by being told to to cash in by betting on the number of corners, and all these things.

That is entirely separate from horseracing. Yes, gambling is an inextricable part of horseracing. If people go to a horserace, they wish to gamble. Some will probably gamble too much and regret it, but most will not. It is a day out in Musselburgh, much as it is in other constituencies. It is an event for people; the ladies day at all racecourses is very colourful, with all hats, dresses and whatever else. People come from far and wide, and it is part of the local economy. I said there had been redundancies, but it still provides employment there and for the hotels, guesthouses and hostelries on race days. People make money, and there is a supply chain of those who provide for the horseracing industry. If we cripple it, we face not only the risk that the likes of Musselburgh will close, but the risk that people will continue to watch and bet on races, albeit those in Ireland, France, Hong Kong or wherever else, as I think the hon. Member for Tewkesbury said. That is why we must protect it and get the balance right.

As Justice Secretary in Scotland, I remember bringing in quite firm legislation on the sale of alcohol. I think it was correctly done. Equally, I remember being criticised at some stage because I gave the licence back to Murrayfield stadium. People asked, “How can you be cracking down on alcohol and yet allow an alcohol licence in Murrayfield?” I answered that we are not against alcohol, in exactly the same way that we are not against gambling; we are about ensuring that it is carried out in a safe and secure manner, that it is regulated, and that people can be protected—sometimes even from themselves. That is why I believe action has to be taken on these social problems. We are our brother’s and our sister’s keeper.

The result on Saturday may not have gone the way most Members here, other than the two of us from Scotland, wanted, but the match will have been enjoyed. It was better that people went to the stadium and had a few drinks consumed safely and under supervision, rather than sitting in a park drinking cans or bottles and then rushing to the game late. That is why, in alcohol legislation in Scotland, when I was Justice Secretary we were always very supportive of the on-trade. We much preferred people to go to a public house where the alcohol industry wants to sell a premium product—at a premium price for them—in a manner that is safe and secure and from which they can benefit. That is much better than people being sold almost unlimited supplies of high-strength, low-price alcohol from supermarkets or elsewhere.

There are corollaries with gambling. What we have to do is stop people losing their shirt, never mind their home, through games of chance or puggy machines—or whatever sophisticated name they have now—sitting in betting shops. People can go online and, as I said, get a credit card and literally see their savings disappear. What we cannot do is undermine where people can go and have a flutter and enjoy themselves as part of a day out.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting speech. May I refer him to the comments made by the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn)? He made it clear that without the levy income that horseracing generates from online betting, Musselburgh and other racecourses would not exist for having a nice day out and a bet at the ring. The income the horseracing industry gets from online gambling is absolutely critical for horseracing to continue in this country.

[Kenny MacAskill]

I said at the outset that I am conscious that Musselburgh and other racecourses have to get income from the gambling industry. If people now gamble more online as opposed to going to the betting shop, even the one opposite me in Dunbar, that has to be accepted. We have to separate the gambling that is being sold in every shape or form, as it is, and entertainment, because that is what horseracing is. Gambling is a legitimate part of it and sustains it. Obviously, the industry seeks to make more money out of encouraging people to bet and gamble on football; it does not put the same money in, except in terms of shirt advertising or whatever else, and it does not benefit the grassroots game or any club. The Government have to make sure they take the necessary action against gambling, not those who are at the turf in such places.

I fully accept the point made by the hon. Member for Shipley that people now place bets not by going into a betting shop, but on their phone—not even on their computer. However, we should provide protection for what is an industry. It may be an anachronism; one could argue that other sports should get the benefit, but we are where we are, and we have to recognise that as a society. On that basis, we have to differentiate horseracing, which needs to be protected and which we want to encourage people to participate in because their gambling will be supervised, moderated and part of a culture, and other gambling—as I said, it is like drinking in a pub as opposed to drinking in a public park.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir George. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The fact that over 100,000 people have signed the petition on financial risk checks in less than a month shows the strength of feeling on the topic. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for leading this important debate. This issue is important to everyone who offered their signature, as well as to the gambling and racing industries, which want to be sure that the checks are truly frictionless before they are rolled out. It is also crucial for organisations and families who are concerned about gambling harms and want confirmation that the updated regulation in the gambling White Paper will be going ahead. The Government must be able to strike that balance, as they have promised.

I would like to set out the context for introducing financial risk checks as part of the gambling White Paper more broadly. Half of adults across the UK gamble each month. The vast majority do so safely, moderately and in a way they enjoy. I remember my nan going to bingo every week when I was growing up, and I have always enjoyed going to the races—I was pleased to attend the St Leger last year. For some, however, gambling can become a more serious problem: 300,000 people across the country experience problem gambling, and 1.8 million are considered to be at elevated risk.

The last time gambling laws were updated was back in 2005. Since then, the landscape has changed dramatically. Thanks to our tablets, laptops and phones, most people now have the potential to carry a casino in their pocket, meaning that they can gamble anywhere and make huge losses in a very short time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) outlined; I really appreciate the work that she has done over many years in this area. Because of that rapid growth in technology and our growing awareness of the impact of gambling harms, changes to our gambling regulation are now long overdue.

In my time as shadow gambling Minister, I have met those who are recovering from addition, as well as family members who have suffered the unimaginable pain of losing a loved one. For those people, it is absolutely clear that gambling harm has the potential to be devastating, and that more must be done to ensure that families are protected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke powerfully about.

Affordability checks form part of the new, modernised system of gambling regulation that is fit for the future. Accompanied by other measures such as online stake limits, data sharing between gambling firms and a crackdown through the regulator on black market activity, they will ensure that the law does more to protect children and adults who are vulnerable to harm.

The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) spoke about how early intervention in the form of checks can make a difference and change the course of addiction. That may well be the case—it is important to make early interventions if we can—but it strikes me that there is a piece missing, because it is not clear what intervention will take place as a result of the checks. This is perhaps not an issue that we can solve here today, but it needs to be considered in the wider context of the White Paper.

As colleagues have outlined, it is also important that our regulation recognises that many people enjoy betting safely and without harm; the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) outlined that point robustly, as always. The Government must therefore be clear on how they will actually go about ensuring that affordability checks are accurate, frictionless and non-intrusive for consumers, as they have promised. I will conclude my speech with a number of specific questions for the Minister, but I will first speak briefly about why, in this context, the racing industry in particular is concerned about the nature of the checks.

Many Members have spoken about the impact that racecourses have in their constituencies, and I will try to list them. We had the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) with Newmarket, the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) with Cheltenham. The hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who is a huge champion for the industry, spoke about his racecourse, Haydock. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) spoke about Musselburgh, and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) spoke about the economic benefit of racecourses in such areas. Apologies if I missed anyone out.

Last week, I hosted a roundtable with representatives from the racing sector, including those who started today’s petition. They shared their thoughts on the potential unintended consequences of the checks, which the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) spoke about very powerfully. Racing and gambling have a naturally symbiotic relationship, with the success of each industry somewhat dependent on the other. With more than 5 million spectators enjoying a trip to the races each year, it is clear that many people enjoy the combination too, making it the country’s second favourite sport. However, as a result of the partnership, the Government predict that the White Paper will cost the racing industry £14.9 million, with the British Horseracing Authority saying that that could rise to almost £50 million a year when considering the impact of the levy, media rights deals and overall funding.

In turn, as we have heard today, such losses could lead to lower prize money, decreasing participation, job losses in the rural economy and an overall decline in the sport. It is important for racing that the Government and the Gambling Commission work with the industry to ensure that financial risk checks are truly frictionless, targeted and accurate.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is being very generous, and I commend her on being knowledgeable on the subject. I have a lot of time for her, as she knows. Based on what she said, would she support the calls that we have heard from many hon. Members today that perhaps a distinction should be made between games of skill and games of chance? I took from what she said that that would probably deal with the two separate issues she referred to.

[Stephanie Peacock]

I understand that argument, and I have some sympathy for it. However, I do not think that we can carve out horseracing in particular as being free of harm; I simply do not think that is the case. Of course the harm for the horses is less than some, but it is greater than others. We need to strike a balance. I am sympathetic to the argument made by the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that the Minister will pick it up when he speaks. That is also why it is right that we should work to find a future-proof settlement on the horseracing betting levy, which contributes about £80 million to £100 million to the sport. I hope therefore that the Minister can update us on how the review into that is progressing.

Let me move on to the specifics of how the checks will be conducted. The Minister must be clear on how friction will be removed from the system. Indeed, in those rarer cases where it is proposed that bank statements or payslips might be needed as part of an enhanced check, it is unclear just how frictionless the process could possibly be. Concerns have also been raised with me about the value of using net losses alone without combining them with other markers of harm to prompt an affordability check. As a result, it would be helpful if the Minister could set out in full the latest thinking on how the checks will be conducted, so that they are accurately targeted and have limited user input. In the absence of that, can he let us know when we might expect a full response to the consultation?

The Gambling Commission confirmed late last week that the lower-level checks will use only publicly available data and will run on higher thresholds to start with. It also said that for enhanced checks there will be a pilot to test the details of data sharing. Can the Minister confirm the pilot to the House today and outline how the Department will work with the commission, credit agencies and the gambling industry to ensure its smooth running? Further to that, it would be reassuring if the Minister could set out how the pilot and higher threshold period will be evaluated. For example, what issues will the commission look out for, and what criteria will define success? It is important that we get that right. If the checks are not frictionless or are more disruptive than genuinely useful to those who are at risk, there is a risk that customers will be driven from the regulated industry to the black market, where there are no safer gambling protections whatsoever. That is a real concern, as has been spoken about today.

There is consensus on the need to update our regulation so that vulnerable people are better protected from gambling harms in the modern age. However, at the same time the punters, racing and the gambling industry deserve some clarity about how the Government will ensure that affordability checks are carried out with accuracy and in a way that does not cause unnecessary friction for those gambling responsibly. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Department plans to strike that balance.

Excess Death Trends

Philip Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

As we have seen in data published by the ONS, non-covid excess deaths continue to run higher than they should. People are dying unexpectedly across all age groups, particularly at home. Since the restrictions in March 2020, there have been 110,000 excess deaths in people’s own homes. In the week ending 22 December 2023, deaths at home were 11% higher than the five-year average. In the first 11 months of 2023, over 21,000 excess deaths took place at home, which is roughly one every 25 minutes.

Last month an article in The Lancet, co-authored by the head of mortality analysis at the ONS, stated that although

“the causes of these excess deaths are likely to be multiple”,

ONS data did show some clear trends—in particular, the “largest relative excess deaths” since the pandemic occurred in young and middle-aged adults, with the number of cardiac deaths happening outside hospitals the most elevated. In other words, young and previously healthy people are dying at home from cardiac-related events, and we do not know why. The article concludes:

“Timely and granular analyses are needed to…inform prevention and disease management efforts.”

Let us be clear: this is not a new phenomenon. Experts have been raising concerns about excess deaths since as early as 2021. I remember seeing an interview with Professor Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, where he called for an investigation into the 75,000 excess deaths at home between March 2020 and October 2021. Some 90% of those excess deaths were not covid-related, but related to things such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Many of those deaths could have been prevented had people not been dissuaded from seeking care, because they were told by the media and the Government to stay at home and protect the NHS. Perhaps they tried to get help but were dismissed by a health service concerned with only one disease.

The calls for an investigation went ignored then, just as they are ignored now. Perhaps the covid inquiry, as others have said, should make better use of Professor Heneghan’s time by asking about this topic rather than the tittle-tattle that it seems to revel in. The pertinent question is: why did we lock down at all? That is what I think did the biggest damage.

We can all speculate on the cause of excess deaths, which are clearly happening, from withdrawal of healthcare during lockdown, the increased risk of sedentary lifestyles and alcohol consumption, the impact of the pandemic and related restrictions on NHS staffing levels, increasing NHS waiting times, lack of access to emergency care, covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions or another unknown cause—perhaps a mix of all of the above. Until the Government commit to a robust and independent investigation, we will not know for sure and the speculation will keep going. That is why the Government need an investigation rapidly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I am afraid I have limited time.

The Opposition have stated clearly, and I confirm again, that we believe vaccines are the most effective public health intervention in relation to coronavirus and health in general. It is clear from extensive independent research that the covid-19 vaccines have been and continue to be extremely successful at preventing deaths. Sadly, there have been extremely rare cases of people suffering side effects that are possibly linked to the vaccine, but the data does not suggest that there is a link between that and the large increase in excess mortality in recent years. However, when serious side effects do occur, it is right that individuals and their families should have access to the vaccine damage payment. I encourage anyone who has a side effect from any vaccine to use the yellow card system and to report the side effect to their general practitioner.

It is wrong, however, to consistently link the observed excess deaths to covid-19 vaccines. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth), I have concerns that making that link not only stokes fear and misinformation, but distracts the public conversation away from other health concerns of critical importance.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I normally would, but I have limited time, and I really want to explain the Opposition’s thoughts. Although I disagree with hon. Members on this issue, I am pleased that we are discussing the topic today, because as I have mentioned, we face increased excess deaths and a wider health crisis across the country.

The primary cause of excess mortality has, of course, been covid-19. The pandemic was one of the most profound events of our lifetime, and in the UK, hundreds of thousands of people died, and millions were extremely ill. In fact, there are perhaps 2 million people still shielding because of their clinical vulnerability to the virus. I am sure that we all know who some of those individuals are.

The Opposition have made the case over many years that the Government and our health system were not fully prepared, and were far too slow to act throughout the crisis. It is vital that we learn lessons from the pandemic, and take steps to strengthen our resilience for the future. That is why it is so important that the covid-19 inquiry receives the support that it needs: to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.

The Government have named several other reasons, apart from the pandemic, for the increase in excess deaths in recent years.

Future of Horseracing

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) on tabling this important debate. I start by declaring an interest: I am a board member of the Racehorse Owners Association. I have been to the races at the kind invitation of a number of people whose names are in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I am a modest owner of racehorses; it would probably be better to say that I am the owner of modest racehorses.

[Matt Hancock]

I completely forgot to also draw the Chamber’s attention to my registered interests. I have been kindly supported by many people from across horseracing over many years. They support me because I make these arguments; I do not make these arguments because they support me.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure that we are all grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his declaration. Unlike him and my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), I do not seek to ride any winning horses; I just try to back a few, with mixed results. At least when I lose, I know that I am contributing to the levy, as the right hon. Gentleman has encouraged us all to do.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, horseracing is a very successful sport in this country, but it is under increasing threat from foreign competition, particularly from the middle east. Many of our best horses are now sold to race there, where racing is much more profitable than in the United Kingdom.

Whether people like it or not, the vast majority of income for the racing industry comes through betting, one way or another. Owners put an awful lot of money into it without much expectation of return, and I can certainly vouch for that. Betting brings around £350 million a year into the industry. That is much more than the total prize money in the UK. If racing loses that betting income, the problem of horses moving overseas will only get worse. British racing would cease to be the best in the world. That would be terrible for the country as a whole, as well as for individual constituencies.

The right hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to focus much of his remarks on the issue of affordability checks, and I want to concentrate on it in the short time available to me. There is an issue of principle here. Who decides how much people can afford to bet on anything? Who decides what people can afford to spend on anything? We are in an interesting situation where the Government are deciding that people should have an affordability check on their betting, but on nothing else. People who spend a modest amount on betting—for example, those who lose £2,000 over 90 days—will undergo enhanced affordability checks.

I will illustrate how absurd the situation is. A racehorse owner might buy 10 horses, and spend £1 million each year at the sales buying those horses. None of that is subject to an affordability check. They then put those 10 horses in training, and pay fees of around £250,000 a year. None of that is subject to an affordability check. But if they were to spend £2,000 betting on those horses over a 90-day period, they would, at the Government’s behest, be subject to an enhanced affordability check. It is complete nonsense. Surely nobody here thinks that those people should be subject to an affordability check on that basis.

The racing industry worries that people who spend an awful lot of money owning and buying horses, and who enjoy having a bet on their horses when they run, will leave the sport, because that betting part will be at risk if the Government go ahead with their plans. That would be tragic for the racing industry and for those people, and it cannot have been the Government’s intention when they introduced affordability checks.

This blanket number is wrong, and why would it apply only to betting? Why is betting frowned upon to such an extent that the Government want to stick their nose in and find out whether I can afford to spend my money—it is my money, after all—on betting? They do not check whether I can afford to buy a pair of shoes, a coat, a suit or anything else. They want to interfere only if I am betting on anything, including horses. There is an important matter of principle here.

The intention behind some of the rules is ridiculous. For example, if someone loses £2,000 over 90 days, they get an enhanced affordability check, but they can offset only seven days of winnings against that. People’s losses are mounted up over 90 days, but they can offset any winnings made over only seven days. That is absolute nonsense. People could literally win £10,000 on the placepots at Cheltenham in March, go to the grand national at Aintree and lose £2,000, and then have to have an affordability check, even though they are £8,000 up. No account is being taken of how much is won in the previous month or two months—only of what was won in the previous seven days. Those arbitrary figures are ridiculous.

People want proportionate checks. We are basically treating everybody who bets on anything in this country as a potential problem gambler, even though the rate of problem gambling in this country is very low, at about 0.3%.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

We are very proud to have two racecourses in the Windsor constituency. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that if the checks are introduced, all that will happen is that reasonable people who occasionally bet on horses will go to a black market site, where there will be no checks whatsoever? In fact, they will be exposed to all sorts of risks that we do not want, and there will be no revenue to UK horseracing.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. How many people will go to the black market is a matter of dispute; it is impossible to know. However, people like a bet, and the chances are that they will keep betting. If they cannot bet on legitimate sites, they will go to illegitimate sites. There is a lot of truth in what my hon. Friend says.

I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government’s policy on this matter has a Conservative philosophy behind it. We believe that people should be free to spend their money as they wish, and we should not have bookmakers, the Gambling Commission and the Government deciding how much each individual can afford to bet on something. Let people make their own judgments and decisions; we have to have some individual responsibility. Any decisions must be proportionate to the problem, and we are very blessed to have low levels of problem gambling in this country. Those decisions have to focus on the wider impact on the horseracing industry, which cannot cope with the kind of reductions in betting that the right hon. Member for West Suffolk spoke about. That would be a disaster.

Many people in the racing industry think—I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks—that betting on horseracing is a game of skill; it is a matter of checking out the form, the draw, the ground and so on. When I back a horse, I do so scientifically. I can vouch for the fact that they do not always run scientifically, but I pick them scientifically. Does he think that games of skill should be treated differently from games of chance when it comes to betting? I would be interested to know his thoughts on that, because some people think that horseracing should be treated differently.

Many people make a living out of betting—professional gamblers. They go through good runs and bad runs. They will lose more than £2,000 over 90 days on many occasions, but they have won far more than that in the past. We cannot have blanket rules that are not sensible and that do not look at people’s overall patterns of behaviour. On the back of the consultation, I urge the Minister to think again. I urge him to think about making affordability checks proportionate and about Conservative principles, and ask him to have at the forefront of his mind the future of the horseracing industry, which I know he does not want to damage in any way.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

If hon. Members can keep their speeches to around eight minutes or less, we should be great with time. I call Laura Farris.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hosie, and for a change, I actually mean that this time around. Can I start with an apology to Members for being a little late for the start, and particularly to the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) for missing the opening couple of minutes of his remarks? From the Australian jungle with Ant and Dec to the Vietnamese jungle with the SAS to plain old Westminster Hall, it is indeed a pleasure to see him here. I agreed with a chunk of what he said, but I have to say that I disagree with what he and many others on the Tory Benches said about affordability, which I will come to later.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I seem to have found ourselves on different sides of just about every argument since I was elected in 2015. He made a comparison between spending on gambling and spending on suits and shoes and other forms of expenditure. The contribution from the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), who spoke of how severe the issues are with problem gambling, shows how ridiculous that analogy actually is.

In my first year as an MP, one of the first cases I took was from a chap in Linwood who had lost absolutely everything because of his problem gambling. He then spent a long time campaigning to try to improve the lot of others and some of the safeguards around gambling. I very much remember that case and have obviously stuck up for that.

[Philip Davies]

Given that he is particularly concerned about the damage that certain things do, and affordability checks are therefore important in that, does he believe that affordability checks should be brought in for people who buy alcohol, since alcohol does far more damage to people than gambling?

[Gavin Newlands]

When we talk about gambling, we often compare it with alcohol and tobacco, so that is a perfectly fair challenge. The Scottish Government have tried to recognise the harms of alcohol, with our minimum unit price on it.

[Philip Davies]

But that is not an affordability check.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Gavin Newlands]

But it is a problem, so that supports my argument, not the hon. Gentleman’s, I would suggest. I will come on to affordability checks later and if he wants to intervene then, he is more than welcome to do so.

With that all being said, the Scottish Government obviously recognise the benefits of racing to the economy and the positive impact that it has had on employment in communities across Scotland. The 2018 annual review highlighted that the sport generated more than £300 million to the Scottish economy, as well as sustaining nearly 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs. Who can forget that, yet again, Corach Rambler brought home the grand national to Scotland earlier this year? According to Scottish Racing, by 2025, the impact of Scottish racing is projected to rise from just over £300 million to half a billion pounds of revenue for Scotland’s economy, with £50 million in tax revenues. Each year, most of that goes to the Scottish Government.

Racing remains the second most popularly attended sport in Scotland after football. It attracts a diverse section of society, with nearly nine out of 10 racegoers comprising people from both middle and lower socioeconomic groups. Females account for over half of all race-goers in Scotland, and it is set to support 3,700 jobs, including in employment across Scotland’s racecourses and tourism activities supported by race-goers. It also supports or sustains jobs through the development of racehorses such as Corach Rambler, media coverage of race days and off-course betting.

From time to time, all of us will receive, particularly around the grand national and what have you, a number of emails about animal welfare in relation to horseracing. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) can speak better than the rest of us combined on this issue, given his depth of knowledge, so it was good to have his input, too.

Animal welfare is covered by devolved legislation, which makes the keeper of an animal responsible for its welfare and permits the prosecution of those who do not ensure such welfare, such as the need for a suitable environment, and so on. The British Horseracing Authority, which I have met a couple of times over the years, assures us that it complies with all aspects of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 through its rules of racing and the licensing and inspection of participants. It works closely with a range of animal welfare organisations, such as World Horse Welfare, to maintain and promote horse welfare. The BHA also seeks to minimise the risk of injury and fatality to thoroughbred horses on racecourses, and it records and analyses such incidents.

Much of today’s discussion has been about the gambling levy and affordability. We in the SNP think that the gambling levy should go further to tackle gambling-related harms, such as by dealing with advertising, regulating online bookmakers and ensuring that the levy funding is allocated properly. As the Minister will know, this is a completely reserved matter, and a review took place that generated some 16,000 responses. Forty-seven per cent of people surveyed in the UK had gambled in some way in the four weeks before the survey. Most gambling—I am happy to admit that I very occasionally dabble, although it has been a number of years since I have done so—is done without any harm. However, for those who face problem gambling, the impact can be harmful and addictive, with one person committing suicide in the UK every day because of gambling-related harms. Thankfully, the Gambling Act will be modernised and made more effective for the digital age by providing adequate protections, notwithstanding a lot of the very good points made about some of the overseas websites, which we need to do more to address.

[Philip Davies]

I think I heard the hon. Gentleman repeat the figure of one person committing suicide every day as a result of gambling. He should know that that figure is not accurate but has virtually been plucked out of thin air. If he wants to give a quote for the basis of the figure, I would love to hear it. The figure, which has often been quoted by Gambling with Lives, has been debunked, not least by the Gambling Commission. I hope he will not rely on that dodgy information.

[Gavin Newlands]

That is the other side of the argument. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I am happy to write to him with the source of the figure I am using.

Two million families in the UK are blighted by problem gambling, and more than 55,000 children aged between 11 and 16 are addicted to gambling, with 60% of the gambling industry’s profits coming from 5% of gamblers. A poll by Clean Up Gambling found that 72% of the public supported affordability checks for those who want to bet more than £100 a month, and 74% supported limits on how much money can be staked on a single online bet. Without affordability being addressed, individuals suffering from gambling harm will switch between online operators and continue losing money, with potentially catastrophic consequences, as I outlined by mentioning my constituent and, indeed—

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) on securing this important debate. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, I attended Donny races along with many others from Barnsley, South Yorkshire and across the country.

Horseracing is our country’s second largest sport—second only to football. Each year, races attract over 5 million spectators across the country, but it is not just people who attend the races that benefit from the sport. Horseracing supports 80,000 jobs and generates more than £4 billion a year for the country, giving it a wider economic importance, as the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and many others said. That is without mentioning the impact the industry has in generating a positive view of our country across the world, with events like Royal Ascot attracting international competitors and spectators. With that in mind, the future of racing must be protected for generations to come.

In recent years, however, horseracing has been at risk of decline. Further to the pandemic, which cost millions in lost revenue, trainers are now also bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis. That has impacted everything from the price of feed to the cost of transportation, but British horseracing was facing serious concerns even before these challenges. The UK has experienced a drop in the percentage of grade 1 races that it holds, as well as a crisis in equine talent moving abroad.

One of the underlying causes of the decline is the level of prize money available to British competitions. Despite reaching record highs in 2022, British prize levels are still significantly lower than rival competitions in France, Ireland, the USA, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, as the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) mentioned. A poor prize pot means poor incentives for everyone in the racing industry—from owners to spectators—to compete and take an interest in British competition.

The racing industry has gone to great efforts to prevent decline and to see the sport grow. For example, as part of their new long-term industry strategy, the BHA has worked hard to secure a boost to prize funds and to publish a 2024 fixture list that includes 170 premier race days. Likewise, the betting industry has continued to foster its relationship with racing, including spending £125 million on marketing to promote racing. Despite that, more must still be done to ensure the future of British racing. For many, that change will start with the horserace betting levy.

Currently, the horserace betting levy is funded directly by bookmakers at a fixed rate of 10% of the gross profit made on British horseraces. Since its introduction, the levy has delivered around £80 million to £100 million of funding annually for the sport—a level that has been maintained in recent years despite declining turnover. Compared with other countries, however, the overall percentage of return that racing receives from the betting industry is on the low end of the scale at 3%. It is welcome, therefore, that the Government have committed to reviewing the levy to ensure that it delivers an appropriate level of funding for the sector. That review must answer the many questions being asked about the levy’s current structure.

I ask the Minister for a clear update on the progress of the review, including whether the Department has made any judgment on whether the levy should be raised, linked to inflation or adjusted to cover all bets by British customers, including those on international races. It is essential that the review looks to protect racing and its relationship with the gambling sector in the round. In that vein, I also ask the Minister for an update on what the Department is doing to ensure that money paid by gambling firms for racing media rights is actually benefiting the sport. For example, what meetings has the Minister had specifically with media rights companies to ensure that money is moving from betting to racing in a way that positively impacts the sport?

Concern has also been raised about the impact of the gambling White Paper and particularly—as has been mentioned a number of times in the debate—affordability checks on horseracing. Although I have only recently been appointed as the shadow Minister with responsibility for gambling, I have already met a number of charities and organisations that work to prevent gambling harms, providing a range of treatment, education and advice. Although there is, of course, a spectrum of gambling harm, I have seen at first hand that gambling addiction can have a devastating impact on the lives of individuals and their families. It is therefore important that gambling regulation is updated. Indeed, the last Gambling Act was introduced back in 2005, long before the huge growth in online and mobile gambling opportunities. An update to that is well overdue, and the Government must waste no further time in introducing a modern system of gambling regulation that is fit for the future. Affordability checks will form an important part of that and must be set independently, rather than by the industry. These checks must be accompanied by online stake limits, data sharing between gambling firms and a crackdown on black market activity funded through the regulator.

However, as well as ensuring that the law protects children and adults vulnerable to gambling harms, it is important to ensure that the regulation recognises that millions of people enjoy betting safely and without harm. The Government must therefore be very clear on how they will go about ensuring that affordability checks are frictionless for consumers, as they have promised. The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) used the word “proportionate”, which I think is a good one. That is important for the sustainability of the gambling industry, which we know racing relies upon, and for ensuring that customers are not incentivised to leave the regulated market and turn to the black market. The safety of racehorses is also fundamental.

[Philip Davies]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her post. I agree with the overwhelming majority of what she has said, and I commend her for it. I wonder what she thinks of the issue that a number of Members have raised about whether games of skill should be treated differently from games of chance when it comes to gambling regulation, whether it is affordability checks or any other measure.

[Stephanie Peacock]

That is a very valid point, and it is one for the Minister to address. A balance needs to be struck. We have to recognise that gambling, whatever form it is in, can devastate lives. I have acknowledged in my comments that there is a spectrum and that not everyone who gambles has a problem, but we need to ensure that the regulation is fit for the modern day.

I want to talk briefly about welfare. When I was at Doncaster races, the British Horseracing Authority showed me round and explained some of the vital measures that were in place to maximise the welfare of racehorses. I was really interested to hear the contribution from the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), who spoke with great experience and knowledge of the issue.

Following the tragic events at this year’s grand national, which left many distressed, it is welcome that the industry has come together to implement a package of safety measures before next year’s race, including reducing the maximum number of runners, investing in course infrastructure and ensuring that participating horses are in good enough condition to compete. I welcome that. Equine care must be at the forefront of the industry’s concerns, and the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) spoke about the veterinary centre in her constituency.

To conclude, the Labour party acknowledges the huge contribution that horseracing makes to both our culture and our economy. I have a number of personal memories of the races, in particular of attending the Yorkshire cup last year, where I watched the super stayer horse under Frankie Dettori win. I was there with my very good friend, the late Jim Andrews, who passed away not long after that. It was one of the last days we spent together, and it is an incredibly fond memory of mine. I know that people across the country will have similarly fond memories, and that is why it is really important that we protect the future of the industry.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) for securing this important and timely debate, and I appreciate his support for horse racing not only in his constituency but across Britain.

The Government acknowledge the significant contribution that racing makes to our economy. As has been rightly mentioned by Members from constituencies across the country, it plays a central role in the livelihoods of many people in our rural communities. The employment that it supports across racecourses, training yards, breeding operations and related sectors reflects a powerhouse industry that is respected at home and abroad, and it is one that I am keen to explore even further through a forthcoming visit to a training yard. We absolutely agree that British racing is a substantial asset to the country and remain committed to supporting the industry.

As many Members have said, horse racing is the second biggest sport in the UK in terms of attendance and contributes £4 billion annually to the economy in direct, indirect and associated expenditure. The fact that so many people go to the great races—some 65,000 to 70,000 to the grand national, and 200,000 over the four days of the Cheltenham festival—shows how important it is. I have seen that at first hand during my visit to Newmarket this summer and in discussions with the Jockey Club and Arena Racing Company, as well as the measures around welfare, which were particularly interesting to see in Newmarket. The industry enjoys a reputation as a global leader and is part of the GREAT campaign, which recognises that horse racing is a valuable asset and has a tremendous amount of soft power.

My hon. Friends have noted the importance of the levy. As has been said, in 2017, the levy was extended to online bookmakers and fixed at the rate of 10%, so that it no longer had to be negotiated each year. That has seen a significant rise—almost doubling in amount from £49 million to £95 million—and the forecast for 2022-23 is around £100 million.

On the horserace betting review, the British Horseracing Authority has presented its case that there is a significant gap in its funding that means that it cannot compete with jurisdictions such as France and Ireland. The authority has submitted suggestions on how to close the gap, and we are considering those proposals as we undertake our review, which is due by April next year. Of course, I cannot pre-empt the outcome of that at this stage, but I reassure all colleagues that the decision will be firmly based on the evidence.

Changes would require legislation, so a sensible first step is to explore a voluntary agreement, especially when there are so many competing demands on parliamentary time. We are looking at all options and encouraging racing and betting to work together in the best interests of the sport. Reaching a mutual agreement on the way forward for the levy would be beneficial for everybody. To support that aim, the BHA and the BGC were invited to submit evidence over the summer and have been given extensions to come to an agreement. I met both groups in early September for an update on the discussions, and I look forward to hearing more from them when I meet them again in the next few weeks.

The levy is not the only source of funding for racing. It represented just 6% of racing’s total income in ’22, and far greater proportions were earned from owners, breeders, racegoers, media rights deals and sponsorship. While we review what the levy provides, we have also asked racing and betting to explore jointly how they can maximise other sources of income for racing. I am encouraged by the close engagement that has taken place and welcome the recent changes to the fixture list, which should bring an additional £90 million to racing by 2028.

The BHA and other industry stakeholders have raised concerns about the impact of the financial risk checks that were set out in the Government’s White Paper in April. As the darling of the Racing Post, as I seem to be these days, I want to reassure everyone that I have heard those concerns and take them very seriously. I have already met many Members who are present today, including members of the all-party parliamentary group on racing and bloodstock, and we have many more meetings to come. Given that the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is next door to mine, I cannot avoid him, as much as I may try, but I commit to those meetings carrying on long after the consultations have been completed.

[Philip Davies]

Given that the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and I actually agree on this issue, which does not happen very often, does the Minister accept that we really must be on to something?

[Stuart Andrew]

If only I could have achieved that when I was the deputy Chief Whip—that would have been great, but there we go.

I have also met with horse racing bettor forums to hear about this from a customer’s perspective, which is incredibly important, and I will continue to engage with all those stakeholders. Let me also take this opportunity to address a couple of important points. The first is to distinguish between the checks that many operators are currently doing and the future system that was set out in the White Paper. At present, the Gambling Commission has not set specific thresholds or requirements for how or when operators must consider customers’ financial circumstances. There has only been an ask to prevent a repetition of the cases in which operators allow rapid losses that would be life-changing for most of us. However, that has led to inconsistency across the sector, with different operators seeking proofs at different points, often in the form of onerous documentation such as payslips and bank statements. We also know that many operators are requesting personal financial information for a range of reasons that are not necessarily related to safer gambling. I have heard concerning reports that some operators are using checks as a way of restricting the accounts of successful bettors. As a result of listening to all of this, I have spoken to the Gambling Commission CEO about these issues. I asked him to challenge operators to be more transparent with customers and more consistent in how they apply the checks now. They are looking at that and I am waiting to hear back in the coming weeks.

My focus is also on the new coherent national framework underpinned by data sharing, which was outlined in the White Paper and the consultation. We want it to be a significant improvement for customers and companies, to have clear requirements and a much smoother process for assessments, and crucially to bring uniformity rather than the process that people are seeing now and which has been described by Members here today. It will ensure that we see no more of those terrible cases where people lose tens of thousands of pounds in a very short time. As the Minister for gambling, I have also had to hear the awful stories that families have raised with me, and it is right that we act in that area.

I agree with many Members who have pointed out the need to be proportionate. The White Paper was clear: we only want checks for those most at risk of harm. We want the checks themselves to be painless for the overwhelming majority of customers, and neither the Government nor the Gambling Commission should put a blanket cap on how much money people spend on gambling. That will be at the forefront of our minds. The point about being frictionless is essential. I reiterate my commitment that proposed checks will not be mandated across the sector until we are confident that they are frictionless for the vast majority of customers who will be caught by them. The Gambling Commission will continue to work closely with gambling operators, the financial services sector and the Information Commissioner’s Office to develop the checks. We are also exploring options such as pilots and phased implementation. I am pleased that the Gambling Commission has agreed to host a series of workshops with the industry to explore these in detail.

It is important that the wider public have their say too. It is great that the Gambling Commission’s recent consultation received over 3,500 responses, many of which focused on financial risk checks and the relationship with racing. The regulator is working hard to analyse those responses and, notwithstanding its statutory independence, we will continue to work closely with it as it refines proposals before introducing new requirements. The consultation was on all aspects and all details, including the levels at which those checks will come in and how we consider the previous winnings.

The Government are keen to ensure that measures such as these checks do not adversely affect racing or interrupt the customer journey. They also cannot push away high-net-worth individuals such as owners and trainers who invest in the sport. We want to protect those at risk of harm, but with minimal disruption to the majority who, I recognise, place bets on horseracing with no ill effect. I also want to point out that the proposals the Commission are consulting on will apply only to online gambling accounts; they will not affect betting shops or on-course bookmakers.

On the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk about the workforce, the Migration Advisory Committee has recommended adding six racing roles to the shortage occupation list. That recommendation is currently being considered by the Home Office, but I will ensure that I write to my colleagues there to highlight this debate.

The Government remain committed to supporting horseracing in this country. It is vital to the rural economy and a source of great pleasure to many people. I look forward to further discussions on these important issues, especially as the review of the levy continues.

Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

I could not agree more. The hon. Lady points out that a few individuals damage the reputation of a whole organisation and, especially when it comes to our NHS, that is devastating. The Bill should be good for organisations because it protects them as well.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady clarify—I am not sure from her remarks so far—whether she is in favour of Lords amendment 1, or is she speaking against it?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I will come to that later, but I will be supporting the Lords amendments.

There are many good employers who have implemented measures to safeguard their employees. However, far too many have not done enough to prevent and punish sexual harassment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

I accept what the hon. Member says. We will certainly not oppose the Bill, but we do have to challenge the Minister on why she has changed her mind, given that, last year, she said that the measures in the Bill

“continue to form a key part of the Government’s national strategy for tackling violence against women and girls.”––[Official Report, Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Public Bill Committee, 23 November 2022; c. 10.]

Why have the Government decided to change their mind on it? It seems to me that they have folded to pressure from their Back Benchers. Let us not forget that the Bill came about as a result of an extensive Government consultation, which received more than 4,000 responses.

[Philip Davies]

It is not necessarily for me to come to the Government’s defence here, but I think the hon. Gentleman is tying himself up in knots with his argument. The amendment was passed in the House of Lords. He will have noticed, I am sure, that the Government do not have a majority in that House, so they cannot be held responsible for an amendment passed in it. If the Government had done as he asked by overturning the Lords amendment, the Bill would have fallen altogether, so I am not entirely sure what he is arguing for.

[Justin Madders]

I am sure that the hon. Member is aware that we vote regularly on Lords amendments in this place, and that the Government use their majority to overturn them. The point that I am trying to make is this: where does this leave Government policy on the issue? The Fawcett Society found that 56% of women working in the hospitality sector, and 47% of those working in the services industry, have faced sexual harassment in the workplace. What will the Government do about that?

[Philip Davies]

If the hon. Gentleman wished to press the matter to a vote as a point of principle, he could vote down the Lords amendment. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) would be delighted if he did, because in doing so he would guarantee that the whole Bill fell. Is that really what he wants?

[Justin Madders]

No, that is not what I want, which is why I have said that we will not oppose the amendment, but we are still entitled to express our disappointment about the capitulation. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s 2018 report found

“a quarter of those reporting harassment saying the perpetrators were third parties”

and that third-party sexual harassment was dealt with poorly and considered

“a ‘normal’ part of the job”

by some employers. I do not think that is a situation that we should defend. Let us be clear: we would not have objected to the Bill if that had been in place—we certainly would have supported it—but we will support it as it stands because, as the hon. Member for Bath said, it is an important step in the right direction, albeit a much smaller step than originally intended.

The question remains: what is the Government’s plan to deal with third-party harassment? If they will not bring forward a legislative solution, what do they intend to do? If there were a repeat of the scenes at the Presidents Club tomorrow, what would be the consequences for the perpetrators? We need answers to those questions.

Despite the removal of the word “all” from the Bill, the duty to prevent sexual harassment is, as the hon. Member for Bath said, a new duty that represents a positive step forward. Establishing that preventive duty will shift the emphasis away from a reliance on individuals reporting harassment to employers and will encourage employers to take preventive steps. We are optimistic—we can be—and hope that the Bill will drive structural change by fundamentally shifting the responsibility from the individual to the institution, but what that will mean in reality and how much capacity the EHRC will have to investigate complaints remains to be seen. Its responsibility to create a statutory code of practice should mean that the focus will be more on working with employers. Does the Minister have any information on when she expects that statutory code of practice to be published, should the Bill be passed, and will it draw mainly from the non-statutory code of practice that has already been produced?

We believe that everyone should be able to go to work safe from sexual harassment, knowing that their employer has taken steps to create a safe working environment. That is why a Labour Government would go much further than the House has today.

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous comments. He himself has been a valuable member of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, and he is right to say that many people—not just our constituents in this country, but people elsewhere—feel that they have been ignored by the powers that be. There is a glimmer of hope, in that during the public inquiry into covid-19, Lady Hallett, when discussing the terms of reference for what is called the fourth module of the inquiry—which will take place next July—seemed very much minded to deal with the issues that my hon. Friend has mentioned and about which I continue to be concerned.

In order to emphasise that this is not just a subject for the United Kingdom, let me mention a book that was published recently. I declare an interest, as one of the contributors. “Canary In a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World” is described as

“A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders.”

In my own essay, I said a great deal about these issues, including about the failure of our own vaccine damage payment scheme to recognise that people had suffered harm and, in some cases, bereavement as a result of the vaccines. We could not, I said, continue to ignore these pressures. It was encouraging to learn about all that is happening in other parts of the world from contributors in Canada, the United States, the rest of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I have here a House of Commons Library edition of the book, and I am going to return it to the Library, so if any other Members want to have a look at it, they can.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for all the sterling work he has done on behalf of the people who have been injured by the vaccine. May I return him to his point about the covid inquiry and what Baroness Hallett said? I would not want him to give the impression that that means the Government should be able to leave it to the inquiry to deal with this issue, given that it may not produce a full report for many years. People need compensation now. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should adopt his proposal—which provides for a much shorter timescale—and get on with it, rather than using the inquiry as a get out of jail card?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has anticipated what I was going to say later, namely that the Government need to take their head out of the sand and face up to the reality that this issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. People with the rights of audience have already made their preliminary statements. Would it not be so much better for the Government to undertake the action set out in the Bill now, rather than waiting for the inevitable next summer?

In a sense, the Government have been found out now: everybody realises that, contrary to the impression given for a long time, for some people—an unfortunate minority—the covid vaccines were very bad news. In some cases, they resulted in deaths and bereavements. The failure to face up to that is at the heart of my concern and led to my producing the Bill. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for sponsoring it.

Unlike many Bills that I have introduced in this place, this Bill has some explanatory notes, so people who look at it can see that what we are asking for is reasonable. It does not need legislation; all it needs is will on the part of the Government to act now and do the things set out in the explanatory notes.

As my hon. Friend said, this is an issue that will not go away, and it is now very much on the agenda. In the meantime, thousands of people have put in their claims, and those claims are being dealt with pitifully slowly. Only about half of them have been assessed. Some of the latest statistics that I have got—it is quite difficult to drill them out of the Government through parliamentary questions—say that, as of 19 September, 221 claims would have been successful on the basis of causation but fell short because they did not meet the 60% disability threshold, and 142 claims have been awarded because they did exceed the 60% threshold. That is 363 cases where it is accepted that the disabilities suffered are as a direct consequence of the vaccine. Is it not interesting that of those 221 claims that fell below the 60% disability threshold, some 116 would have exceeded a 20% threshold? Does that not show that the Government are being unreasonable in sticking to a 60% disability threshold, rather than reducing the threshold in the way that I suggest in the Bill?

In the response to parliamentary question 199355, which I received on 19 September, I was told:

“From 1 October 2021 to 1 September 2023…6,809 claims relating to COVID-19 vaccinations”

had been made under the scheme,

“and 251 claims relating to vaccines for other illnesses”,

including 15 for measles, mumps and rubella.

I think most reasonable people would say that the alarm bells should be ringing very strongly, because almost all the claims that the vaccine damage payment scheme has received in the last two years have been in relation to covid-19 vaccines. There have been hardly any in relation to MMR—15, as against 6,809—and failing to deal adequately with those 6,809 claims is actually undermining the case of vaccine confidence. As a consequence, we are seeing a lower take-up of vaccines. People do not trust the vaccines and do not trust the Government, and their lack of trust is centred around the way in which the Government have responded—or failed to respond—to the vaccine damage that has resulted from covid-19 vaccines. This is a very serious issue.

This is a serious issue. I just hope that the Minister will be rather more forthcoming in her response than she and her predecessors have been in the past. We have not really got beyond the point of the Government accepting that people have died or suffered serious injury as a result of the vaccines.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will come on to this point, and I do not want to steal his thunder. However, the authorities are now accepting that people have been damaged. They would not be making these payments unless they accepted that damage had actually taken place. Nevertheless, in some cases the compensation being given does not cover the costs of dealing with the disabilities that people have as a consequence. Given how the Government coerced people into taking the covid-19 vaccine, without particularly warning them about the adverse reactions that might happen in some cases, does my hon. Friend think the cost of dealing with the disabilities caused should be covered by the Government in full, rather than up to the arbitrary limit that is in place?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. In essence, that is what the Bill calls for. At the moment, someone can put in a claim and it is resolved months or years later. Even if they are found to have suffered serious injuries, the maximum payment is £120,000, which is meant to cover all the consequential losses, the cost of care and perhaps the lifetime support that they may need as a result of those injuries.

The Government say, “Don’t worry, you can bring a civil claim in parallel,” but the civil claims that some people are bringing in parallel are being frustrated by Government lawyers. In some cases, months have gone by and then the Department of Health and Social Care has said, “You should be making your claim against AstraZeneca rather than against the Department.” However, essentially that is a claim against the same organisation, because the Government are the indemnifier of any liabilities on the part of the producers of these—at the time—experimental vaccines.

I will quote briefly from a reply that the Prime Minister gave to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on 22 March this year. My right hon. and learned Friend has a constituent who is a litigant; he suffered four weeks in a coma and has permanent injuries as a result. He has carers, with all the associated costs and loss of earnings, and the £120,000 does not begin to get near the compensation to which he would be entitled under normal circumstances. My right hon. and learned Friend asked the Prime Minister about the £120,000 maximum payment and about the arbitrary 60% threshold, but did the Prime Minister respond to either point? Sadly, he did not. All he said was:

“We are taking steps to reform vaccine damage payment schemes, by modernising the operations and providing more timely outcomes”.—[Official Report, 22 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 330.]

That was not an answer. It was hardly accurate either, because the outcomes are not timely. Many people have been waiting for more than 18 months for their application to be dealt with. There are many hundreds of applications for which the medical notes have still not been received. The Government, under pressure from me, said that they would introduce subject access requests to ensure that people could get the medical notes. Subject access requests have been put forward, but not in respect of every case. A lot of those requests have been outstanding for more than three months, against a statutory limit of one month. I do not think that the Prime Minister was correct in saying that effective steps are being taken to modernise the operations and provide more timely outcomes.

I turn briefly to what is in the Bill, particularly to link it in with the UK covid-19 inquiry. On 13 September this year, Lady Hallett held the preliminary hearing for module 4 of the inquiry, which, as I have said, will take place in July next year. The issue of the adequacy of the vaccine damage payment scheme will be fully on the agenda for that meeting in July. At the hearing, we heard from legal representatives of some of the groups of people who have suffered vaccine damage. Ms Morris was their counsel. She said:

“The primary causes of these injuries and deaths are: vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT; vaccine induced vasculitis; stoke; cerebral venous sinus thrombosis; and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Survivors are having to cope with the aftereffects of their injuries, including brain damage and physical disablement, whilst the bereaved are struggling to live without their partners, children or parents. All VIBUK members have a confirmation that their injuries were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.”

That issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. Ms Morris KC goes on to say:

“In addition to their injury and bereavement, those we represent have also experienced a second trauma: a lack of medical knowledge and understanding about the risk and presentation of vaccine injury has left injured people undiagnosed and without treatment. Furthermore, the prevailing institutional mindset within medical bodies and the government has been fixated solely on acknowledging the benefits of the vaccine. This has led to those reporting vaccine injury to feel disbelieved, unheard and marginalised.”

She goes on:

“Censorship is a very real issue, my Lady for the vaccine injured and bereaved. Their support groups have been shut down by social media platforms and their experiences censored by the mainstream media. They have to speak in code online for fear of having their only source of support taken away from them. They face stigma and abuse for sharing their symptoms in the context of the Covid vaccine and even been branded as anti-vax for sharing very real and medically proven vaccine injuries.”

She then says:

“In August of last year the UK CV Family lost its first member to suicide and a survey of their members reported 73% have considered suicide.”

These issues are going to be debated at the covid inquiry. Why are the Government not doing something more actively now?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend, as ever, is making a powerful case. Has he had any indication of whether in the covid inquiry—or even his Bill; it was not entirely clear from my reading of it, although perhaps he will correct me—any changes should be made retrospectively, so that cases that had already been considered, either on the disability threshold or maximum compensation, would be revisited in the event of any changes being made?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. My view is that the changes should be retrospective in relation to those whose claims have already been dealt with. The relatively small number of people in respect of whom causation has been established but the disability threshold of 60% has not been met could be dealt with in a routine way.

There is also the bigger issue of whether the £120,000 payment, which has not been increased since 2007, should be updated in line with inflation. When I have raised this with the Minister in the past, she has said she is looking at it or taking into account the points that have been made. It is a blatant abuse. If in 2007 the Government thought that £120,000 was a reasonable payout, why do they now think that a significantly lower sum in real terms is appropriate? The Government are the cause of this rampant inflation, and they are one of the main beneficiaries of it, because they are refusing to index tax allowances in line with inflation.

The Government’s coffers are filling up as a result of these inflationary pressures, and yet they continue to be Scrooge-like in relation to people who did the right thing and got themselves vaccinated in the interests of public health but suffered consequences because of an adverse reaction. This is just not good enough. Will the Government listen? That is what I hope will happen as a result of this debate and of the pressure that the Government must be feeling from what will happen at the covid inquiry.

There are other points made in the submissions to the covid inquiry, but what is most important is that Lady Hallett and the counsel to the inquiry have made it quite clear that they will be spending a lot of time looking into these particular issues. No longer will the Government be able to avoid answering questions, as they are able to in this House when we raise questions and they can give us non-answers. They will be facing the cross-examination of the counsel to the inquiry and be held to account for their actions or lack of action. That is why, although the Bill obviously will not get a Second Reading, the Government need to take into account and act on the recommendations in it, because this issue is not going to go away.

I am conscious that other Members want to speak in the debate, so I will just make a couple of other points. If the Government are not prepared to increase the rate at which people can be paid, how are we going to get anywhere? At the moment, people who are sadly victims of the contaminated blood scandal do not have to show 60% disability in order to qualify for compensation. Should there be some equivalence between the compensation that is payable under the contaminated blood inquiry and that which should be paid to those who have become victims of covid-19 vaccines?

If we look at personal injury payouts under the Judicial College guidelines, a 60% disability is the equivalent of an above-knee amputation of one leg. Under the guidelines, that would give rise to damages—just for that trauma—of anything between £105,000 and £137,000. The consequential loss flowing from that—the loss of earnings, the health costs and all the rest of it—would be in addition to that. Does that not just show how paltry these sums are? It makes the case for a no-fault system. Why are we messing around with trying to establish liability? If somebody confirmed as being perfectly healthy has a vaccine and then suffers a lot of adverse consequences, why can we not accept that, in the absence of any other explanation, it must be assumed that those consequences were as a direct result of the vaccine?

Interestingly, Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies has described the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 as a “no-fault compensation scheme”. Would that it was. If it was, we would not be where we are now. That is one of the most important issues that should be addressed the Government. Indeed, it is being addressed in other jurisdictions. Let us remember that for years the Government said that these vaccines were absolutely safe and effective—there was no qualification at all. Germany’s Health Minister said something similar, but more recently retracted, saying that he had got it all wrong and that although they were safe and effective in most respects, they were not safe and effective for everybody. As a result, Germany is paying out significant sums to people who were adversely affected. Our Government need to address this issue seriously and try to get back on to the right foot in advance of the hearings at the covid inquiry next July. So I ask that the House supports this Bill on Second Reading.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for not only a tremendous speech setting out his inarguable case, but the ferocious and tenacious way in which he has pursued this matter. He is like a dog with a bone, and I am sure that victims of damage from the covid vaccine are very grateful to have him as a champion for their situation. As he pointed out, I am a sponsor of the Bill and so I support it wholeheartedly. I would also like to encourage him to think about extending about its scope a bit further so that it not only deals with the damage caused by the vaccines, but seeks to try to prevent such damage from happening in the first place. Obviously, once people have been severely disabled or, as in some cases, have died as a result of the vaccine, that is no comfort; we want to prevent this from happening in the first place and some things could usefully be done to try to help in that regard too.

Of course, the authorities love to play down the fact that some people have suffered adverse reactions to these covid-19 vaccines. I am sure many of us have had contact from constituents who have experienced serious symptoms following vaccination. I am talking not about a sore arm, which many people suffered as a result of the vaccination, but about a range of life-changing conditions such as strokes, heart attacks and blood clots, to name a few. My hon. Friend mentioned Anna Morris KC and her submission to the covid inquiry; as she said, these are not normal side effects that anybody would reasonably expect from a pharmaceutical product. I very much hope that, when the Minister responds to the debate, she puts it clearly on the record that she and the Government accept that some people have suffered adverse reactions to the covid-19 vaccine and, in some cases, very serious adverse reactions. In some cases, people have died as a result of taking the vaccine. This is an opportunity for her today to make that clear on the record for everybody to hear. I can anticipate her speech in some regards. She will no doubt say that the vaccine programme was a great success and that it gave the vast majority of people a great deal of benefit. But that is not the point in this particular case, as my hon. Friend said at the start of his speech. Nobody is arguing about that. We are talking about the small proportion of people—it is a large number of people—who have suffered adverse reactions as a result of the covid-19 vaccine. That is what I hope she will address directly in her speech.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The point my hon. Friend makes is important. On 1 June 2022, in answer to a question as to whether the Government accepted that some people had died as a direct result of having received the covid-19 vaccine, the Minister’s response was that the MHRA published a weekly report

“covering adverse reactions to approve covid-19 vaccines”,

which were available on a following link.

[Philip Davies]

Quite. My hon. Friend is right, and today gives the Minister the opportunity to make it unequivocally clear that the Government do accept that that has happened. That would be a big step in the right direction and would at least give some comfort to those people who have felt ignored for far too long.

The authorities are of course playing down the adverse reactions that people have had from covid vaccines because, first, they do not want to pay up, as my hon. Friend has set out clearly, and, secondly, it was they who pushed these products so strongly to the public in the first place—or dare I say it, coerced the public into taking them at the time. It was of course coercion when this House, back in July 2021, voted to mandate the vaccine for care workers, resulting in tens of thousands of hard-working carers leaving their jobs. We also came within an ace of mandating the vaccine for all health workers. Just think of the damage that that would have been done, with potentially 100,000 workers leaving the NHS on the back of that.

In December 2021, this House voted for plan B, which introduced vaccine passports for large gatherings, among other things. As we knew then and as we know now, the vaccine does not stop infection or transmission. There was no evidence base for the policy. There was no impact assessment done on the policy. Thank goodness that that ugliness that we saw in this House was short-lived. I was—and still am—proud to have been one of the 126 who voted against that mandation.

People were coerced in other ways. People were told that they were not allowed to go on a flight anywhere unless they had taken two vaccines. They were not allowed to visit anywhere. In effect, everything was done to force people to take the vaccine. Whether that was, in utilitarian terms, a good or a bad thing is neither here nor there with regard to my hon. Friend’s Bill. What is here or there is that, given all of that, when people do have adverse reactions to the covid vaccination —in some cases, very serious ones; in some cases, sadly, people have died—the Government have an absolute duty to pay the appropriate compensation to people when they moved heaven and earth to force them to take it in the first place. In some cases, they forced people to take it against their will— otherwise, they would have lost their jobs. The Government have a duty to do something here. Where we are at the moment is just not good enough.

It is worth noting how shocking the treatment of unvaccinated people became. Our policies led to untold damage to their livelihoods and mental health. Friends and family turned their backs on them, because of the prevailing narrative in politics and the media that they must be bad people for making up their own mind about a personal medical intervention. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), one of the greatest people in this House, summed it up best:

“suggesting that these people who, for whatever reason...have chosen not to get vaccinated are somehow deserving of our bile is a disgrace. It does not reflect badly on them; it reflects badly on us.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2022; Vol. 708, c. 76-77.]

In black and white on the Pfizer website, one can read important safety information concerning the Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccine:

“Myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred in some people who have received”

that product,

“most commonly…adolescent males 12 through 17 years of age.”

It goes on to say that the chance of that occurring is “very low”—I am sure the Minister will reiterate that today—but, of course, the chance of somebody of that age suffering serious illness related to covid is very low as well. The Minister might not be so keen to point that out, and Pfizer does not seem to point it out on its website, but we should make that clear, too.

I raise that because—I hope the Minister will address this in her remarks—I have been rather alarmed to hear of a clinical trial for a Moderna mRNA covid vaccine involving healthy children aged 12 and up. That is not something from the past, from during the pandemic; it is happening now. It has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and involves the Bradford patient recruitment centre, which is on the edge of my constituency, so some of my constituents could be involved.

I wrote to the Health Research Authority in August to ask what ethical rationale there is for the inclusion of healthy children in the trial, because it is known, and has been for a long time, that healthy children are at a vanishingly low risk of covid-19—they were at the height of the pandemic and they certainly are now. So far, I have not received a coherent answer to that simple question. But it has come to my attention that the centre has been recruiting children for the trial using advertisements that have not been ethically approved, as is required by UK law. Children can be recruited to a clinical trial only if they as individuals have some reasonable expectation of significant benefit when balanced with the risks associated with their participation. Potential benefits for adults that may flow from a trial are not a good enough rationale and do not trump that principle.

So, given that there cannot be any expectation of significant benefits for a cohort of people who are not at significant risk, what is going on here? Why are those decisions being made? It comes back to where I started: the authorities seem completely unable, and in some cases unwilling, to protect people—in this case, children—from potential harm. The cost-benefit analysis, if it has been done—I am not sure that it has—certainly does not appear to stack up.

I will finish by commending the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in the Bill. The Government have a duty of care to the people who have been injured by or lost loved ones to the vaccine, which they took because the Government pressured them into doing so. The Government also have a duty to prevent harm from happening in the first place. Failing to act on this will only lead to more harm and further damage to the public’s trust in authority. I hope that the Minister will, in summing up, refer to what is happening in Bradford and explain why that particular trial has been allowed to go ahead.

During the pandemic, the authorities did not go big on warning people of the potential damage or adverse effects of the vaccine; they were just interested in coercing as many people as possible into taking it. They must accept responsibility for those who have done the right thing but faced damage as a result. I hope that the Government will put that right today.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing the Second Reading of this Bill. This is an important issue, and I thank him for the tone in which he has conducted the debate and for his sentiments at the start, when he said that this is not about being anti-vaccination. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) indicated, vaccination is a crucial part of our armour in dealing with disease across the world. The Bill is specifically about the covid vaccination and I advocate, as did the shadow Minister, that after clean water, vaccinations are the most effective public health intervention in the world in terms of saving lives and promoting good health.

The flu vaccination, which is being rolled out as we speak, will enable many people to be healthy over this winter and avoid hospital admission. The HPV vaccination for preventing cervical cancer, which is rolled out to young girls and boys in our schools, has the potential to eradicate cervical cancer in future, and we must remember that vaccination has a powerful role to play in the health of our nation. Globally, we have one of the best immunisation programmes around the world, and it is important to pay tribute to all those staff who take part in vaccinations programmes and make them such a success.

Let me turn to the covid vaccination. The UK was at the forefront of tackling covid-19 through the vaccination programme, and it was the first healthcare system in the world to deliver the covid vaccination outside clinical trials. We should be proud of that. As the shadow Minister said, it was one reason why we were one of the first countries to lift restrictions, because of our success in covid vaccination. On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), I am happy to go on record and say that although covid vaccines have saved tens of thousands of lives, unfortunately there have been extremely rare circumstance where individuals have, very sadly, experienced harm and difficult circumstances, following a covid vaccination. Thankfully, such cases remain rare, but that does not reduce the impact on those individuals who experienced that and their families. I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing concern for those individuals who suffered such harm, and their families.

Vaccination remains the best way for individuals to protect themselves and others from the impact of covid-19. We have done the right thing by encouraging people to have the vaccine, to protect both themselves and other more vulnerable members of society.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for what the Minister has said, but I think that the people who, as she acknowledges, have suffered harm and damage from the vaccine—they were coerced into taking it in one form or another—would probably prefer more than just sympathy and concern from people in the House. What they really want is proper compensation. Will she therefore take on board what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) said and ensure that people are adequately and properly compensated for the damage done to them? Will she at the very least ensure that the maximum amount that can be paid out rises in line with inflation?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will come to those points shortly. All medicines have risks and side effects—even simple paracetamol, which is taken safely by the vast majority of people, can have serious side effects for some—and it is no different for the covid vaccine. That is true of all vaccinations, and that is why we set up the scheme specifically for vaccinations in the first place.

The Government cannot support the Bill’s proposals to make provision about financial assistance specifically for those who have had a covid vaccination. The scheme as a whole is to support anyone who has had side effects to a certain level of impairment from any vaccination, and it would be wrong to single out covid-19 for a separate scheme. The Government already provide long-standing mechanisms to offer financial assistance to individuals suffering disablement following vaccination in the form of the VDPS.

Just to clarify, the VDPS is not a compensation scheme. It was established in 1979 to provide a one-off tax-free payment to individuals who had been found on the balance of probability to have been harmed by a vaccine listed in the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979. In December 2020, covid-19 was added to the scheme to ensure that those who had severe disability found to be linked to the covid-19 vaccine would receive support through this tried and tested system.

The Government’s current focus is on scaling up the scheme’s operation by the NHS Business Services Authority, which took over its running in November 2021 from the Department for Work and Pensions, because we felt it was better placed to access patient notes and to improve timeliness. We have seen a significant improvement in trying to process claims, which I will come to.

The Bill also asks the Government to report on the merits of a no-fault compensation scheme for covid-19 vaccine damage. Establishing a dedicated stand-alone scheme would risk favouring those who, in extremely rare circumstances, have sadly experienced harm following a covid-19 vaccine above those harmed by other vaccines, which, again, does happen in rare circumstances. That would create inequality between vaccines, which could be damaging to other vaccination programmes.

Another element of the Bill is to question whether there should be an upper limit on the financial assistance available. It is important to reiterate that the VDPS offers a one-off lump sum payment. It is not intended to cover lifetime costs for those impacted. The amount has been revised periodically by statutory sums orders. The initial payment when the scheme was set up in 1978 was £10,000. It has been reviewed several times, with the current amount set at £120,000 as of July 2007. The award should be considered in addition to the Government’s support package for those with a disability or long-term health condition, which includes statutory sick pay, universal credit, employment and support allowance, attendance allowance and personal independence payments.

[Philip Davies]

The Minister says that the figure has been reviewed periodically and that we are now at £120,000. She just said that it was last reviewed in 2007, which was 16.5 years ago. Does she not think it is time for another periodic review?

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend makes a point. A review of the limit is not just down to the Department of Health and Social Care. I went to a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, where that question was asked. Of course, we will look into that, but I cannot give a commitment at the Dispatch Box today. We will keep it under review as part of ongoing business and cross-Government discussions.

Finally, I turn our opposition to adjusting the criteria for disability. I recognise that some hon. Members who have spoken would prefer the level of disability for the scheme to be assessed on a sliding scale. However, assessing it on that basis would run counter to the intention behind it, namely to provide a one-off lump-sum payment.

The current scheme eligibility of 60% disablement is in line with the definition of severe disablement set out by the Department for Work and Pensions in “Industrial Injuries Disability Benefit”, which is a widely accepted test of disability and puts it in line with many other assessments across the board. Very few claims are rejected for not reaching the 60% disability threshold, and in the event that an application is turned down on that basis, there is also the option for claimants to appeal against the decision and provide additional evidence. We will continue to review the latest data on covid-19 to ensure that when decisions are reviewed, the reviewed decisions are based on up-to-date evidence. When I spoke to the APPG, concern was expressed about the time taken to appeal against decisions. I have given a commitment that if an appellant has been waiting for a significant time, I shall be happy to follow it up if the APPG contacts me about any individual case.

The Bill asks for an adjustment of the provisions on awarding payments to include all cases in which there is no other reasonable cause for death or disablement. Such an amendment to the scheme would not be beneficial at this time, because the payments are awarded on the basis of causation on the balance of probabilities. As the criterion for the scheme is already established and is being applied by medical assessors to conclude the remaining covid-related claims, any such amendment would risk further delaying outcomes for all claimants, including those most in need.

A number of questions have been asked this morning, and I have tried to answer as many as possible. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) asked about the MHRA. I hope I can reassure her by saying that following the Julia Cumberlege report “First Do No Harm”, there have been significant changes at the MHRA. I am pleased that it reviewed the AstraZeneca vaccine and made two changes based on evidence, but I can give reassurances about other medicines as well. The MHRA has had a significant influence on the recent statutory instrument concerning the use of sodium valproate, which is used mainly for epilepsy but can cause harm during pregnancy. There have been a number of such pregnancies. The MHRA met campaign groups such as In-FACT—the Independent Fetal Anticonvulsant Trust—and as a result of its influence, the SI provides that sodium valproate can be dispensed only in the manufacturer’s original packaging, so that women are aware of the risks. That is an example of the way in which the MHRA is changing. As Dr June Raine said, it is not just a regulator now; it is part and parcel of the patient safety framework around medicines. I hope that that provides some reassurance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

The Government are always happy to give evidence to the inquiry. My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have had correspondence from constituents and from people around the country asking for the covid inquiry to cover vaccines, too. We have talked today about transparency and about being able to have an open and honest dialogue on vaccines. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton is right that to give confidence to vaccine programmes, people need to be able to raise concerns, to raise it when they have had an adverse event and to feel confident that those things will be investigated and not brushed under the carpet.

[Philip Davies]

I felt that the Minister was coming to a close. Before she does, I want to raise the point I made in my speech about the clinical trial involving children and a Bradford patient recruitment centre. I do not expect her to give a definitive answer now, given that I have just raised it, but will she give me a pledge that she will look into this matter, take on board the comments I have made and write back with her thoughts about what is happening with that trial?

[Maria Caulfield]

Absolutely. I will finish my points to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and then come back to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. It is for the inquiry to decide what it investigates, but it would be helpful for vaccines to be discussed at the inquiry, so that people can put their concerns forward and so that we have a thorough look at the vaccine programme. That will enable us to learn lessons for the future, should we ever need to roll out a vaccine programme on that scale ever again.

To touch on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I worked in clinical trials before I came into this place, and there are strict rules about posters advertising clinical trials, particularly for children. I do not know the details of the particular trial he is talking about, but if he has concerns about how it is being recruited to, that is a matter for the MHRA. I suggest that he contacts the MHRA, or I would be happy to discuss it with him after the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If that is the explanation, I am sure that also covers the fact that only 15 cases have been referred to the vaccine damage payment scheme in relation to MMR vaccines, compared with 6,809 in relation to covid-19. If the Minister thinks they are all equivalent then so be it, but all I can say is that the evidence suggests otherwise and there are serious questions now about whether the VDPS is fit for purpose. That is why it is great news the inquiry will be looking into that issue.

[Philip Davies]

Was my hon. Friend disappointed with the Opposition response? They are usually all over real-terms cuts like a rash. Any time there is any hint of a real-terms cut, the Labour party is blasting about it at every opportunity. On this, we have had no increase in the payment for 17 years—that must be a world record real-terms cut—yet the Labour party did not seem to have anything to say about whether it should be increased.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern, but that was not the only aspect of concern I had about the response by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare). It seemed to me that she was still, essentially, refusing to accept that people have died as a result of taking covid-19 vaccines and that many more have suffered severe injury or other adverse health effects. The Opposition are concentrating all the time on the benefits of vaccines without seeming to recognise the importance of looking at those people for whom vaccines were not beneficial.

Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

This Bill has not had the benefit of being discussed previously, but I think it is a very important issue and I am delighted that we have the opportunity to give it a bit of airtime.

Regulatory impact assessments lie at the core, or should lie at the core, of policymaking and public legislation. If the tool if a regulatory impact assessment is not properly applied, the quality of the legislation suffers. We have seen a large number of examples of that. Perhaps one of the most telling is that we have legislated for net zero without ever really going through the full implications of what it will entail. I have the privilege of serving on the Environmental Audit Committee. It is willing to discuss almost everything on the environment, but it is not prepared to engage in an inquiry into an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero. The Government should have introduced an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero before the legislation was passed. The same is true of the Climate Change Act 2008. It is also true of HS2. There was never a proper cost-benefit analysis regulatory impact assessment of HS2.

More recently, the Renters (Reform) Bill—which I see, much to my horror, is having its Second Reading on Monday—was published in May. It was the subject of severe criticism by the Regulatory Policy Committee because no proper impact assessment was produced at the time the Bill was introduced. It was introduced by Ministers who had not gone through the process of thinking through the implications of what they were doing. That is what the Bill before us is about. I had the privilege of being a Minister for six years or so—some time ago now, Madam Deputy Speaker—and it was very important, when introducing legislation, to think about the implications and consequences. That should be done in the first instance internally by Ministers with officials before it is exposed to public debate. A well organised regulatory policy framework should ensure that that is what happens.

The Bill is based on the fact that, too frequently, that is not what happens. Even more frequently recently than in the past, the requirement for impact assessments to be produced prior to a Bill being published has not been complied with. The consequences, to which I have referred, are that Bills come forward that are badly formulated and unnecessarily contentious. Was it not extraordinary that two or three weeks back, we had a statutory instrument in relation to the implementation of the Windsor framework? The Windsor framework agreement was back in spring. We were told that there had been insufficient time for the Government to produce an impact assessment of its contents. How ridiculous is that?

The Bill basically says that we have rules in place, but there is no point in having a command without a sanction. Clause 1 sets out in plain language a requirement that the

“Government must, on or before the appointed day, lay before Parliament a qualifying regulatory impact assessment for—

(a) any Bill introduced to Parliament by a Minister;

(b) any draft statutory instrument laid before Parliament by a Minister that may not be made unless it is laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament; and

(c) any statutory instrument made by a Minister and subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

Clause 2 is the sanction:

“If His Majesty’s Government fails to comply with the duty under section 1, subsection (2) applies.”

We cannot have a proposal requiring that the Minister be locked up, suspended from the House or whatever, so I did the best I could, which is basically to say that the Minister would be embarrassed into action. That embarrassment will require the Minister responsible for the Bill or the statutory instrument in question to

“make a statement to the relevant House…as soon as reasonably practicable, and…on every third sitting day until a qualifying regulatory impact assessment has been laid before Parliament.”

If that had happened in relation to the Renters (Reform) Bill, we would not be where we are now, with a totally inadequate impact assessment that has been produced late and much amended; at one stage it was given the red pencil treatment.

My Bill would enable this House, and the Members of this House who take legislation seriously, to be properly informed. Quite often, it is impossible to get answers to questions about Bills; there are questions that should have been raised during the impact assessment process, but have not been raised; and Ministers are ignorant of the implications of what they are doing. That is why I suggest that this is a sensible way forward. I do not often say this in relation to a Bill of mine, but I cannot see why anybody would be against it—except a Minister who does not want to comply with the normal rules. This is a short Bill, but I think it would be revolutionary in improving the quality of legislation.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

This is not written into the Bill, but if the cost-benefit analysis in a Minister’s impact assessment shows that the cost outweighs the benefit, what does my hon. Friend feel should happen as a result? He will remember that when the Labour Government introduced the Bill that became the Climate Change Act 2008, they had done an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis. By their own admission, the costs were twice as big as the benefits, yet they pressed on with the Bill anyway. Is my hon. Friend saying that where the costs outweigh the benefits the Government should do something about it, or is it enough just to publish the analysis?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think it is sufficient to publish it. It is then for Members of Parliament to look at what it contains, including the costs. My hon. Friend and I were two of the five people who voted against the Climate Change Bill on Third Reading. Why did we vote against it? Because we could see that the costs would far outweigh the benefits. We had read the impact assessments—well, I cannot remember reading them at the time, I must say, but I had the very strong feeling that we were entering unknown territory and the costs would be very significant. I am not saying that we should not bring forward legislation when the costs are greater than the benefits; I am saying that Members of Parliament should be able to take responsibility and say to Ministers, “Why are you bringing forward legislation whose costs will be far greater than the benefits?”

This debate takes place just after the Government have changed the rules on business impact targets, the provision on which has been repealed. Despite the Government’s policy of zero increase in the total costs of regulation on business in this Parliament, the Regulatory Policy Committee, which is responsible for looking at better regulation, has stated:

“When combined with the figures for the previous two years, the total increase for the parliament to date is £14.3 billion.”

That was in February 2023; I think there has since been an update. Having said that they would not increase the costs on business in this Parliament, and that we would have better regulation and an independent scrutiny process for holding them to account on that, the Government have found themselves on the wrong side of their own rules—so what have they done? They have decided to change the rules. They are now saying that for the last period, they will no longer calculate the cost of Government regulation to business.

If one starts with from a cynical viewpoint, one becomes even more sceptical after looking at the detail. I do not think that, at heart, the Government really want to be held to account by the House for their measures. They would much prefer measures to be nodded through with no questions to be answered: they would like everyone to be nodding donkeys. However, if that is not the Government’s view, I hope they will accept the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Government would do well to listen to the former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who I think was in that role for nine years, particularly about how we should better protect and better care about precious taxpayers’ money, which seems to be frittered away willy-nilly by politicians across the House—that is not a party political point.

I am conflicted. On the face of it, this seems like such an obvious thing to do. At face value, the Bill seems to be one of those where we think, “How on earth could anyone object to a Minister having to bring forward a cost-benefit analysis and impact assessment for any legislation they introduce?” But I am not sure that it is quite as simple as that. I will try to explain why and give some examples.

We have heard some examples, which are all interesting case studies about the pros and cons of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is proposing, and perhaps some of the reasons why, even if it were introduced, it would end up being completely pointless and meaningless and serve no purpose at all. The first example is about covid, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). She was right to do so, and it is good for my welfare to say that she was absolutely right in everything she said—I would not dream of saying otherwise. It was astonishing that the Government not only did not do a cost-benefit analysis of the most draconian restrictions on our freedoms that anyone can remember, but freely admitted that they had not done so. They looked at any Member of Parliament who asked for a cost-benefit analysis as if they had three heads—as if that was the most ridiculous thing in the world to ask for. Of course they should have done a cost-benefit analysis. Had they done so, with an impact assessment, they certainly would not have concluded that locking down the country for two years would be a good thing to do, not only because of the effect of locking down schools on children’s education, mental health and all the rest of it, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned, but because of the impact on the economy.

All the problems that we have seen in the economy since the pandemic have been because of the lockdown. The consequences of lockdown, and of coming out of it, are the main reasons why we have such high inflation. All of that was easily predictable, but neither the Government nor the Opposition seemed interested in what might come afterwards. Nobody could see beyond the end of their noses. That is basically the issue: nobody was prepared even to have the debate about what long-term impact the lockdown would have on the economy, on people’s finances, on NHS waiting times—the list goes on. Nobody was interested. Anybody who raised those concerns—even worse, some of us voted against the restrictions and lockdowns—was vilified for doing so. Everything that we predicted has come to pass, but Ministers were not interested.

It is even worse in many respects. The so-called experts on whom the Government were relying, who modelled how many people would die if we did not have lockdowns, and came out with all that absolute tripe at the time, have been giving evidence to the covid inquiry. It seems from what has been said that, in all that modelling, they did not even take into account how Government advice would change people’s behaviour without the need to introduce a law to force that change. They had not even looked at that. How on earth can we get to the point where supposedly intelligent experts did not even consider the impact on people’s behaviour of the Government saying, “We will not introduce any laws, but we think you should avoid close contact with elderly people and keep a two-metre distance”? In that sense, of course it would be right for the Government to conduct robust cost-benefit analyses and impact assessments when they come to decisions. We might hope that, if they did so, they would not come up with such ridiculous decisions as locking down the country for two years.

That also lies at the heart of my reservations about the Bill, which I relayed in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch when I asked whether, if a Government introduced a cost-benefit analysis and the cost was seen to outweigh the benefit, they would therefore be obliged not to bring forward that measure. My hon. Friend said that, no, they would still be free to bring forward that measure and it would be up to Members of Parliament to take that analysis into account. Somewhere therein lies the flaw in my hon. Friend’s plan, for a number of reasons that I will touch on.

The first is that, based on my covid analysis, the cost-benefit analysis would presumably have been done by the so-called experts, but they would not even have taken some costs into account anyway. Their cost-benefit analysis would not even have factored in whether or not the Government just advising people to do something would have changed behaviour—they had not thought about that—so how on earth could they be involved in a cost-benefit analysis? It would have been flawed in that sense. How much trust could we put in it? I do not really know. I think that my hon. Friend is, in effect, placing greater confidence in cost-benefit analyses than perhaps they deserve. He seems to be hanging his hat on them.

[Esther McVey]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I had better.

[Esther McVey]

Surely, if a cost-benefit analysis came forward in one way or another and was scrutinised on the Floor of the House, people could probe it and point out the failures within it. Without one, there is no opportunity to do even that. Would it not at least be a step in the right direction to make sure there is an impact assessment and cost-benefit analysis, because at least then we could have debated those for lockdown on the Floor of the House?

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend makes a fair point, but I am not entirely sure that that necessarily follows, and I will give another example as to why.

I should say in passing that I cannot for the life of me understand why any Minister would not want to do a cost-benefit analysis of any proposal they were bringing forward. It seems to me extraordinary that a Minister would want to bring forward a proposal and not say, “Can somebody do a cost-benefit analysis of this, or an impact assessment?” Why on earth they would not want to do that Lord only knows, but that is a slightly different point. My point is this: what benefit does it have for the decision-making process?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Before my hon. Friend goes on to his next example, may I say that there is no reason why an impact assessment should not look at the behavioural consequences of a particular policy measure? One of my gripes has been that the Renters (Reform) Bill does not give any account of its consequences for reducing the number of people who will be making their houses and homes available to let.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree wholeheartedly. That is why, as I say, for the life of me I cannot see why a Minister would not want to do that impact assessment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

May I suggest an instance where we might not want to do an impact assessment? My hon. Friend makes a good point, and of course the default position is that we should, but in a situation earlier this year the economy faced being ground to a halt because of industrial action—strikes—across the country. Does he think that sometimes the Government have to legislate quickly and may not have time to go through the processes that he and I would normally like to see?

[Philip Davies]

The Minister makes a fair point. Perhaps it is one of the reasons that I am perhaps not quite as persuaded as I would normally be by one of the Bills from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. I want to come back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton.

[Esther McVey]

I am not sure whether I could have intervened on the Minister there, but there should have been a cost-benefit analysis of industrial action, so that the public knew exactly how detrimental those strikes were, particularly on the railways, with the drop in productivity of the whole country. I do not agree that there are times when we should not do a cost-benefit analysis.

[Philip Davies]

If I have to choose between the Minister and my wife, I know who I am going to agree with, and the Minister is on a loser here. Unusually for me, there might be a compromise option, which is that a cost-benefit analysis should be done, but it may not necessarily need to be done before the original decision is made. Perhaps that could be a fair compromise and be considered subsequently.

I want to come back to the reason why what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said earlier might not flow, though it logically should. She said that if we have a cost-benefit analysis, MPs can scrutinise things and make sensible decisions on whatever. I guess in an ideal world that would happen, but it seems to me that in the real world that does not happen. The House should not just take my word for it, because it did not happen during the passing of the Climate Change Act 2008.

As I touched on briefly in my intervention, when the Labour Government brought forward the Climate Change Bill, they did a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have urged them to do. These were not meaningless numbers—we were talking serious money, and literally hundreds of billions of pounds were in the credit and debit columns on this cost-benefit analysis. It was not one with a few hundred thousand here or a few million there.

The Labour Government at the time brought forward the Climate Change Bill with a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have wanted. The original impact assessment showed that the potential costs of introducing the Climate Change Bill were almost twice the maximum benefits, as calculated by the Government who were bringing forward the legislation. One would think that when a Government bring forward a Bill where the potential costs are twice as high as the maximum benefits, Members of Parliament would be fighting over themselves to vote it down. How on earth could anybody support such a ridiculous notion, let alone why a Government would bring forward such a Bill? However, on Second Reading just five MPs voted against it, when a cost-benefit analysis showed it was a non-starter.

What then happened was that Lord Lilley—at that time he was my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden—kicked up a fuss. I must add that during the passage of the Bill the potential cost barely came up—none of the Front Benchers from any party raised the cost, even though it was going to be hundreds of billions of pounds. However, Lord Lilley seized on the fact that the costs were twice the benefits and asked how on earth that could be, so the Government went away with a flea in their ear. But—would you believe it, Mr Deputy Speaker?—they came back having recalculated the cost-benefit analysis and having discovered hundreds of billions of pounds of new benefits that they had not identified when the Bill started its passage through this place. It was miraculous that they found hundreds of billions of pounds of benefits that they had not even thought about.

Either we should believe they were utterly incompetent and had not fully thought through the implications of their Bill before they brought it forward, or, if we are more cynical—I probably fall into that camp—we might believe they redid the figures and came back with some dodgy figures to make it look as if the Bill had a greater benefit than cost.

I am not sure the Bill succeeds on any level. The Climate Change Act 2008 showed me two things. First, the Government will come back with any figures they want just to prove there is a bigger benefit than cost, even if that is dubious, to say the least. Secondly, Members of Parliament are not even interested in cost-benefit analysis. If they were, more than five of us would have voted against the Bill on Second Reading. I am not being funny, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if you go into the voting Lobby and ask people what we are voting on, half the time they do not know, let alone know the cost-benefit analysis of what they are voting on, so I am not sure that a cost-benefit analysis would serve the purpose that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch thinks it would. Therefore, I think the Climate Change Act 2008 represents an argument against his Bill.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough was absolutely right to mention a third Bill, which was about HS2. Everybody has known for years that HS2 was a catastrophic waste of money that was not even intended to benefit the north. History has been rewritten to say that it was going to be some great thing to benefit the north. The last Labour Government envisaged HS2 in order to try to reduce short-haul flights from Leeds Bradford and Manchester airports to Heathrow. It was never intended to benefit the north—that was not the purpose of HS2. History was rewritten and if we listen to Andy Burnham it was going to be the saviour of the north. What an absolute load of tripe. The cost went up and up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said, it went from £37 billion until it eventually got to £180 billion, and pretty much all the people who were arguing for it when it was £37 billion were still arguing for it when it was £180 billion.

In many regards, the only person to have a sensible approach to HS2, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, has been the Prime Minister. He said, not unreasonably, that he supported HS2 when the cost was £37 billion, but he could not support it when the cost reached £180 billion. That is a sensible decision for somebody to make, having looked at a cost-benefit analysis. The Leader of the Opposition will not be interested in a cost-benefit analysis—he opposed HS2 when it was £37 billion and supported it when it was £180 billion. How on earth are we expected to make sense of that? The decision making is absolutely ludicrous.

Politicians do not tend to make logical or financially sensible decisions; they make political decisions. They are not really interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They are interested in what it might look like in a headline in a paper, or in a campaign in a by-election. In many respects, the reason why HS2 goes against what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve here is that actually the Government had done a cost-benefit analysis of HS2. They just kept it quiet, because it did not deliver what people wanted it to deliver. Andrew Gilligan, who was the transport adviser when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, revealed that, even before the latest increase in cost, the Treasury’s cost-benefit analysis had shown that for every pound spent on HS2, it would deliver only a 90p return. Although that was the Government’s official cost-benefit analysis, they were still pressing ahead with it at the time, until the costs became even more astronomical.

Although my hon. Friend is right that cost-benefit analyses should be at the forefront of decision making by Government and by Members of Parliament when they are scrutinising legislation, I just wonder, really and truly, how often people care that much about it. I can only conclude that they do not really care that much at all.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Going back to the HS2 example, I was one of those supporting the objectors who wanted more of the track to go in tunnels. I was supporting them because I thought that it would push up the costs so much that the project would become unviable. That never materialised. Essentially, though, is my hon. Friend not arguing for additional impact assessments during the course of the project?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is highlighting how shrewd a politician he is and what shrewd decision-making skills he has. Ultimately, he was successful in getting the project stopped, but I cannot speculate on whether that was due to the number of tunnels. However, perhaps he helped, and more power to his elbow, because in places like Shipley we support the Prime Minister in wanting better connectivity across the north. The bit that works is north to south; it is across the north that it does not work, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right to focus his money on that. Whether it was down to the cost of the tunnels, I do not know, but it cannot have done much harm.

Finally, the other element of the Bill that I am nervous about, even though it is logical, is how much extra power it gives to what my hon. Friend described in a previous debate today as “the blob”. If we were to be, in effect, governed by cost-benefit analyses in the way that he envisages and in the way that I would like things to be done, I do not think that it is beyond anybody’s imagination that the civil service would, if it was particularly keen on the Government adopting a policy, miraculously produce figures that showed a tremendous benefit and not much of a cost. I am pretty sure that it is not beyond people’s imagination to think that, were the blob, as he described it earlier, particularly determined to block a proposal from the Government, its advice to the Government would be that the cost far exceeded the benefit. I am rather nervous about giving civil servants more power over Government decisions than they already have.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think the hon. Member raised that point earlier in his remarks. I am sure that he is aware that whatever figures the Government produce, they are then scrutinised by an independent body, the Regulatory Policy Committee, to make sure that those figures hold water. Is he not reassured by that?

[Philip Davies]

No, I am not. I know the Minister well—he is a very good man—and I know he would not be swayed by what the blob was trying to tell him to do or not do. He is a man of his own mind and a very talented Minister, and I have no doubts about his decision-making skills. However, I am afraid that the idea that I should be reassured at the Government, in effect, handing over more decision making to some unelected body of the great and the good of the elite, and that I should put all my trust in them, does not give me any reassurance. To be perfectly honest, it somewhat horrifies me that the Government are farming out these things to the great and the good of the establishment.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am rather confused by my hon. Friend’s speech. Normally, he is a sunny chap who looks on the positive side of life, but from what he is saying, it does not matter whether or not we have a serious impact assessment and whether or not it is worked on, because Governments of all persuasions at all times are so hopeless that nothing is ever going to improve, and we are going to have as many cock-ups in the next 100 years as we have had in the last 100 years. Is that really what he is saying?

[Philip Davies]

I think that is a pretty fair summary. If my right hon. Friend wants me to give a summary, that is not far off the mark. Yes, I am pretty sure that that will be the case.

I am afraid to say that, frankly, that is not going to change until Members of Parliament raise their game, to be perfectly honest. I am not particularly pinning the blame on the Government. They do their thing and their job is to get through what they want to get through. The people who should be holding the Government to account are us—those on these Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches. Our solemn duty is to hold the Government of the day to account, yet my point is that we are absolutely hopeless at doing so. As I have said, during the passage of the Climate Change Act, nobody was interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They were just voting for it like sheep because they thought it would be popular, or because there had been an email campaign encouraging them to do so. They were not doing the job they were paid to do, which was to scrutinise the legislation.

This comes back to the other flaw in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that the Government should have to bring forward a cost-benefit analysis, and Members of Parliament could then scrutinise it and make a decision. I have to say to him that, if the Government refuse to bring forward an impact assessment or cost-benefit analysis, Members already have the power to say, “Actually, we’re not going to support this until you do bring forward a cost-benefit analysis.” The solution to the problem he is seeking to solve already lies in the hands of Members on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches if they are simply prepared to assert themselves and make it clear to Ministers, “We’re not just going to rubber-stamp something because you tell us it’s a good thing to do. Until you bring forward the evidence that shows it’s a good thing to do, we’re not going to support it.”

How many times do Members of Parliament ever say that to the Government? They do not say that; they just nod and go along with it. I do not think the Government are actually the biggest problem. I think it is Members of Parliament on the Back Benches and on the Opposition Benches who are the biggest problem, because we do not need this legislation. Members of Parliament should assert themselves and force Ministers to do this anyway.

A cost-benefit analysis brought forward by the Government in effect amounts to Ministers marking their own homework in that, when they bring forward a Bill, they also bring forward the cost-benefit analysis. I am not persuaded at all by the Minister that some body of the great and the good is rubber-stamping what the Government have come up with, no doubt after being appointed by the Government to do that job. What use is that? We want people who have not been appointed by the Government to scrutinise the Bill, not people who have been appointed by them.

Of course, we know that this is the case because it goes back to what George Osborne said at the time he set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. The reason he set it up, as colleagues will remember, is that he was fed up of the previous Government coming up with bogus forecasts to justify their policies and decisions at Budgets and autumn statements. They had, in effect, manipulated the figures to stick within the arbitrary rules they had set for themselves, which they then perhaps no longer wanted to keep. They were in charge of the forecasts and the figures, and they manipulated the figures for their own political advantage. George Osborne’s stated reason for introducing the Office for Budget Responsibility was, in effect, that the Treasury could not be trusted to come up with honest figures that we could all rely on, all the figures were dodgy and we needed an independent body to do it.

If the Bill passes and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch says, “I want the Minister to come up with a cost-benefit analysis,” all we are doing is handing the cost-benefit analysis to the Treasury, which previous Chancellors have said cannot be trusted to come up with accurate forecasts and figures. I am not entirely sure what use it would be to the decision-making process if we ever got to the point where a Member of Parliament was actually interested in what the cost-benefit analysis said.

I feel slightly conflicted. On the basis of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my right hon. Friends the Members for Tatton and for Gainsborough said, this seems, at face value, a very obvious, simple thing to do. I repeat that I cannot understand why any Minister who wanted to make decisions would not want to go through this process. But I fear that, despite the best intentions of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, it would not deliver the outcome that he seeks or, in the end, particularly improve decision making in this House.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on his important Bill. I very much agree with his sentiments about ensuring that we have good financial justifications for our policies as soon as they are introduced to this House, although—as I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies)—I think there are occasions on which we must be able to set those things aside.

What my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch seeks to do through his Bill is to formalise a process that should happen anyway, by making impact assessments a statutory requirement as soon as primary or secondary legislation is introduced. Currently, this is a process that happens through collective agreement.

As I always do when speaking in this House, I will try to put myself in the shoes I was in when I was in business. This place is not always that businesslike; I think it should be more businesslike. When someone in business is about to spend some money or invest in a new policy area, they will look at the costs and benefits of the interventions they are likely to make. However, I do not think that any business will simply bind itself to its own process. This legislation is itself a form of regulation, so I think it is right that we look at outcomes rather than processes. The Government are strongly committed to ensuring proper assessment of our policies, assessing the impacts and seeking to ease the burdens. That is the principle behind my hon. Friend’s Bill.

On my travels around the business community, I talk to many businesses. The principal issue raised by small and medium-sized enterprises is access to finance, but for the large businesses operating in our economy, which are clearly hugely important, the principal concerns are about the impact of regulation and sometimes about the slowness of the regulatory framework; I will come on to that point in a second. Importantly, we are making changes right now that I think my hon. Friend will approve of and that will meet his objectives.

There has been much speculation about the role of Parliament. My hon. Friend asked whether we are simply nodding donkeys. He certainly is not one, and neither is anybody who has spoken in this debate. Parliamentarians across the House can always make changes if they can apply enough pressure to the Government of the day. In my seven and a half years on the Back Benches, I certainly did not feel that I was a nodding donkey.

My hon. Friend wants impact assessments to be carried out prior to legislation even being tabled. He is absolutely right. That point feeds into something even more important, which is that we will ensure we introduce only legislation that is fit for purpose and will have a positive effect on our economy. With the better regulation framework we are introducing, our intention is that consideration of the impact assessment and the cost-benefit analysis will happen even before the legislation has been drafted. That is the principle.

Before a Department decides to legislate, it must first consider other routes that would achieve the same end. If it ultimately decides to legislate in a certain area, a key moment is the write-round, which is where a Minister or Secretary of State writes to other Departments to say that they want to legislate. At that point, the impact assessment should be made available to other Ministers. Hopefully, that will prevent unnecessary legislation resulting from other measures being brought forward that would have the same effect.

I think our recent reform to the better regulation framework meets the intent of my hon. Friend’s Bill. I do not want to put words in his mouth, but I am sure he agrees that the intent is to reduce business burdens. Reducing burdens on business means supply-side reform and more competition, and we know that more competition is the best regulator.

We are focusing on three things within the framework. The first is the existing stock of regulation on our statute book; the second is the flow of new regulation and the need to ensure that anything we introduce has the right purpose and the right effect; and the third, which has not really been discussed in today’s debate, is regulatory practice. What do our regulators actually do in practice when they are carrying out their regulatory duties?

On the existing stock of regulation, for the purposes of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, we have been hunting out bits of regulation that can be removed or amended now that we have the ability to amend what were previously EU requirements. However, the programme covers a wider area than retained EU law; we are looking for other areas in which we can streamline regulation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) was right to say that, as a Conservative Government, we should be in favour of low tax and low regulation, and that is certainly our intention. My right hon. Friend referred extensively to his local RAF base, and we have had many discussions about that because we have had similar experiences over the last couple of years. He may be reassured to know that future impact assessments will look beyond purely economic impacts, and may include some of the measures to which he alluded.

We have already reformed or revoked more than 1,000 pieces of legislation, and 1,000 more reforms and revocations are under way. We have, for instance, either reformed or revoked 500 measures in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 and the Procurement Bill. We have also consulted on reforming retained EU employment law, such as the working time directive recording requirements and wine sector reforms, and consultations are currently taking place on the product safety review and the fire safety of domestic upholstered furniture. The latter two consultations will future-proof our approach to product regulation, alongside our proposal to extend recognition of the CE mark indefinitely.

A number of observations have been made about the work of parliamentarians and its effect on regulation. I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on their work on the taskforce on innovation, growth and regulatory reform, which made 69 recommendations for the easing or simplification of regulations. We have already implemented 10 of those recommendations, and are in the process of implementing a further 49. They involve key issues such as grid connections and reform of our clinical trials process.

We have simplified or scrapped many other regulations. Our reform of the nutrient neutrality rules will potentially release 150,000 previously stalled homes into the marketplace. The reform of the GDPR requirements will save businesses about £1 billion, and the reform of the working time directive recording requirements will have similar benefits. There are also pension and Solvency II reforms and changes, the setting aside of the requirement for small and medium-sized enterprises to provide insurance cover and audited accounts when bidding for public sector contracts in advance of those contracts—that should make it much easier for SMEs to secure such contracts—and changes relating to gene editing, holiday requirements and listing rules for the London Stock Exchange. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned the increase in the number of burdens placed on businesses over the last few years. I cannot comment on the figure that he mentioned—I think it was £14 billion—but regulation does, of course, have its purpose at times. We cannot have clean rivers without regulation. However, I am happy to write to my hon. Friend. I thought he might also mention smart meters, which are included in those figures, because I have heard him mention them in the Chamber before. As we know, the roll-out of smart meters is important to reducing energy use. We have also reformed measures on climate-related reporting in large companies, the energy efficiency of buildings and electric vehicle charging, so that we can have charging stations all around the country. I declare my interest here: as an electric vehicle driver for the past six and a half years, I welcome that, because I know all about range anxiety. The telecoms measures relating to national security—that alone was £2.4 billion—resulted from concerns raised in the House the security threat from foreign actors.

To complement the work that we are doing on the existing stock of regulation, we are working on controlling the flow of new regulation. The better regulation framework, about which I will say more shortly, has been reformed to make it more effective at putting a downward pressure on that flow.

[Philip Davies]

Back in the dim and dark past—when David Cameron was Prime Minister, I think—the Government introduced a “one in, one out” rule for regulations, and then increased that to a “one in, two out” rule. Does that still apply to the Government?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

No, that does not currently apply to the Government. As I say, there are reasons why we regulate, and I have pointed out some of those reasons; I am very happy to write to my hon. Friend regarding some of the reasons we do need to regulate. That is not necessarily the right way to go about it: looking at costs and benefits across the piece is important. In his speech, which I listened to very carefully, he cast some doubts on our ability to properly analyse costs and benefits, so I think it is right that we look at this issue across the piece. Our policymaking should be more nuanced than that.

I have mentioned the landscape of regulators. The third important part of our smarter regulation agenda relates to ensuring we have a well-functioning landscape of independent regulators. These have a significant footprint on the economy, and it is essential that they work well for the United Kingdom. They should operate in an agile and outcome-driven fashion, helping to drive economic growth while protecting consumers and ensuring that markets work as well as they can.

We have launched a series of consultations aimed at improving the outcomes that independent regulation delivers, including a strategic steer for the Competition and Markets Authority and a strategy and policy statement for energy regulation. We have also published findings of an independent review into the Civil Aviation Authority as part of the Cabinet Office’s public bodies review programme. Most recently, we consulted on extending the existing growth duty to Ofgem, Ofcom and Ofwat.

We have launched a call for evidence on the regulatory landscape as a whole, seeking views from businesses, consumers and regulators on what works well and what could be improved on to deliver for the sectors they serve. That call for evidence also seeks views on any further steps we can take to reform the stock of regulation to remove unnecessary burdens, so I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that this Government are completely committed to doing everything possible to keep the impacts on business to an absolute minimum. Those impact assessments play a key role when it comes to controlling the flow of new regulation. They set out the conclusions of evidence-based processes and procedures that assess the economic, social and environmental aspects of public policy for businesses and wider society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned some of the legislation that has not necessarily been accompanied by an impact assessment. He may want to ask questions of the different Ministers responsible for the policy areas concerned: net zero, HS2, and renters’ reform. For something as strategic as net zero, for example, it is hugely complex to identify both costs and benefits: there are some things that we simply do not know. While listening to my hon. Friend speak about those issues, a famous quote from the former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai came to mind: in 1972, he was asked about the impact of the French revolution, and he said, “It’s too early to tell.” There are so many things that we just do not know, which I think was a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. As I used to say in our boardroom, “You can make anything look good on a spreadsheet”, so we have to cast a critical eye over any cost-benefit analysis.

The other thing I would say about more parliamentary scrutiny is that we hear from businesses all the time that they are crying out for us to get on and deliver certain key infrastructure projects, so I do not think it would be helpful to extend the time they take to deliver. One example is the East Anglia pylon project, which is 112 miles of electricity cable going through the east of England. I realise that that project is very controversial, but stopping these things from happening has a cost to business, too. There are different dynamics going on in this conversation.

Impact assessments have evolved into an important and valuable component of the UK’s better regulation system. They have added transparent accountability to the work of supporting policy development. As I have said, independent scrutiny by the Regulatory Policy Committee should offer some reassurance to Ministers, parliamentarians and other stakeholders that the impacts have been considered rigorously. The UK’s approach is already highly regarded internationally, and we continue to score highly in impact assessments and post-implementation reviews compared with the other 38 OECD members. We should be justifiably proud of our world-leading reputation in this area.

The reforms to the better regulation framework deliver on the intent set out in May in the “Smarter regulation to grow the economy” document, and will put downward pressure on the flow of new regulation. The reforms require policymakers across Government to think even more carefully about alternative approaches, before concluding that regulation is the best answer. They will also encourage impact assessments, supporting proposals to focus on a wider range of impacts than was the case under the old system that had a narrow focus on impacts on business. The reforms encourage earlier consideration of how to evaluate whether regulations have achieved what was intended, so they can be revised or removed where they are not working as intended.

To support that, our new approach brings independent scrutiny by the independent advisory body, the RPC, to earlier in the policy cycle. That means that the RPC’s opinion can better inform Ministers’ decisions at an earlier stage on whether proceeding with regulation is the right approach, and whether the impacts are proportionate. All that should further improve the quality and value of the impact assessments that will reach Parliament, and help to ensure that the Government are regulating only where necessary, and designing regulation that is both proportionate and future-proof. We want this to drive the best regulatory environment, and ensure that UK businesses can grow and consumers stay safe.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) raised the issue of covid and the Public Health Act, and she is right to say that we must learn from our experiences during that time. There is always a price for acting and a price for not acting, and it is right that we look at policy decisions that were taken to ensure that we make better decisions in future—not that we ever want to suffer from the same experiences again.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley spoke about the Government frittering money away, and suggested that both parties do that. I am not saying that money is not wasted sometimes. I come from Yorkshire and that is not something we do on an everyday basis—we are keen to avoid it. However, in my eight and a half years in Parliament, and even though we are guilty of it at times, it has always occurred to me that those on the Opposition Benches have an awful lot of money to spend. Time after time, they have voted for tax cuts, or against tax increases, while at the same time calling for increased spending. It simply does not add up.

To conclude, although the Government are not minded to support the Bill, we recognise the vital role that regulatory impact assessments play both in ensuring that Government consider the need for, and likely impact of, new regulations to support legislative change, and in informing decision making and parliamentary scrutiny. The Government do not think the Bill is necessary because there are already proportionate requirements around impact assessments. The framework has always evolved to target regulatory impact assessments where there is the greatest benefit, and we believe our recent reforms move further in that direction.

In the spirit of smarter regulation, which I trust I have shown I very much care about, we should not create new legislation about impact assessment requirements unless it is essential to do so. Our recent changes to the better regulation framework seek to reinforce the processes used in Government, while removing regulation rather than adding to it. We believe that is the correct approach. I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for his contributions to this debate, as well as everyone who has worked hard to raise awareness of the vital role that regulatory impact assessments play when legislative or policy changes are made.

Trends in Excess Deaths

Philip Davies Excerpts

Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

We have experienced more excess deaths since July 2021 than in the whole of 2020. Unlike during the pandemic, however, those deaths are not disproportionately of the old. In other words, the excess deaths are striking down people in the prime of life, but no one seems to care. I fear that history will not judge this House kindly. Worse still, in a country supposedly committed to the free and frank exchange of views, it appears that no one cares that no one cares. Well, I care, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I credit those Members in attendance today, who also care. I thank the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) for his support, and I am sorry that he could not attend the debate.

It has taken a lot of effort, and more than 20 rejections, to be allowed to raise this topic, but at last we are here to discuss the number of people dying. Nothing could be more serious. Numerous countries are currently gripped in a period of unexpected mortality, and no one wants to talk about it. It is quite normal for death numbers to fluctuate up and down by chance alone, but what we are seeing here is a pattern repeated across countries, and the rise has not let up.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for the tenacious way in which he has battled on this issue; I admire him for that. I wonder where he found the media were in all this. During the covid pandemic, every day the media—particularly the BBC—could not wait to tell us how many people had died on that particular day, without any context for those figures whatsoever, but they seem to have gone strangely quiet over excess deaths now.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right: the media have let the British public down badly. There will be a full press pack going out to all media outlets following my speech, with all the evidence to back up all the claims I will make, but I do not doubt that there will be no mention of it in the mainstream media.

One might think that a debate about excess deaths would be full of numbers, but this speech does not contain many numbers, because most of the important numbers are being kept hidden. Other data has been oddly presented in a distorted way, and concerned people seeking to highlight important findings and ask questions have found themselves inexplicably under attack.

Before debating excess deaths, it is important to understand how excess deaths are determined. To understand whether there is an excess, by definition, we need to estimate how many deaths would have been expected. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development uses 2015 to 2019 as a baseline, and the Government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities uses a 2015 to 2019 baseline, modelled to allow for ageing. I have used that data here. Unforgivably, the Office for National Statistics has included deaths in 2021 as part of its baseline calculation for expected deaths, as if there was anything normal about the deaths in 2021. By exaggerating the number of deaths expected, the number of excess deaths can be minimised. Why would the ONS want to do that?

There is just too much that we do not know, and it is not good enough. The ONS publishes promptly each week the number of deaths registered. While that is commendable, it is not the data point that really matters. There is a total failure to collect, never mind publish, data on deaths that are referred for investigation to the coroner. Why does that matter? A referral means that it can be many months—or, given the backlog, many years—before a death is formally registered. Needing to investigate the cause of a death is fair enough, but failing to record when the death happened is not.

Because of that problem, we have no idea how many people died in 2021, even now. The problem is greatest for the younger age groups, where a higher proportion of deaths are investigated. This data failure is unacceptable and must change. There is nothing in a coroner’s report that can bring anyone back from the dead, and those deaths should be reported. The youngest age groups are important not only because they should have their whole lives ahead of them. If there is a new cause of excess mortality across the board, it would not be noticed so much in the older cohorts, because the extra deaths would be drowned out among the expected deaths. However, in the youngest cohorts, that is not the case.

There were nearly two extra deaths a day in the second half of 2021 among 15 to 19-year-old males, but potentially even more if those referred to the coroner were fully included. In a judicial review of the decision to vaccinate yet younger children, the ONS refused in court to give anonymised details about those deaths. It admitted that the data it was withholding was statistically significant. It said:

“the ONS recognises that more work could be undertaken to examine the mortality rates of young people in 2021, and intends to do so once more reliable data are available.”

How many more extra deaths in 15 to 19-year-olds will it take to trigger such work? Surely the ONS should be desperately keen to investigate deaths in young men. Why else do we have an independent body charged with examining mortality data? Surely the ONS has a responsibility to collect data from coroners to produce timely information.

Let us move on to old people. Most deaths in the old are registered promptly, and we have a better feel for how many older people are dying. Deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s show what we ought to expect: there was a period of high mortality coinciding with covid and lockdowns, but ever since, there have been fewer deaths than expected. After a period of high mortality, we expect and historically have seen a period of low mortality, because those who have sadly died cannot die again.

Those whose deaths were slightly premature because of covid and lockdowns died earlier than they otherwise would have. That principle should hold true for every cause of death and every age group, but that is not what we are seeing. Even for the over-85-year-olds, according to the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, there were 8,000 excess deaths—4% above the expected levels—for the 12 months starting in July 2020. That includes all of the autumn 2020 wave of covid when we had tiering and the second lockdown and all of the first covid winter. However, for the year starting July 2022, there were more than 18,000 excess deaths in this age group—9% above expected levels. That is more than twice as many in a period when there should have been a deficit and when deaths from diseases previously associated with old age were fewer than expected. I have raised my concerns about NG163 and the use of midazolam and morphine, which may have caused—and may still be causing—premature deaths in the vulnerable, but that is, sadly, a debate for another day.

There were just over 14,000 excess deaths in the under 65-year-olds before vaccination from April 2020 to the end of March 2021. However, since that time, there have been more than 21,000 excess deaths, ignoring the registration delay problem, and the majority of those deaths—58% of them—were not attributed to covid. We turned society upside down before vaccination for fear of excess deaths from covid, but today we have substantially more excess deaths, and in younger people, and there is a complete eerie silence. The evidence is unequivocal. There was a clear stepwise increase in mortality following the vaccine roll-out. There was a reprieve in the winter of 2021-22 because there were fewer than expected respiratory deaths, but otherwise the excess has been incessantly at this high level.

Ambulance data for England provides another clue. Ambulance calls for life- threatening emergencies were running at a steady 2,000 calls a day until the vaccine roll-out. From then, they rose to 2,500 daily, and calls have stayed at that level since. The surveillance systems designed to spot a safety problem have all flashed red, but no one is looking. Claims for personal independence payments from people who have developed a disability and cannot work rocketed with the vaccine roll-out and have continued to rise ever since. The same was seen in the US, which also started with the vaccine roll-out, not with covid. A study to determine the vaccination status of a sample of such claimants would be relatively quick and inexpensive to perform, yet nobody seems interested in ascertaining this vital information. Officials have chosen to turn a blind eye to this disturbing, irrefutable and frightening data, much like Nelson did—and for far less honourable reasons. He would be ashamed of us.

Furthermore, data that has been used to sing the praises of the vaccine is deeply flawed. Only one covid-related death was prevented in each of the initial major trials that led to authorisation of the vaccines, and that is taking the data entirely at face value, whereas a growing number of inconsistencies and anomalies suggest that we ought not to do this. Extrapolating from that means that between 15,000 and 20,000 people had to be injected to prevent a single death from covid. To prevent a single covid hospitalisation, more than 1,500 people needed to be injected. The trial data showed that one in 800 injected people had a serious, adverse event, meaning that they were hospitalised or had a life-threatening or life-changing condition. The risk of this was twice as high as the chance of preventing a covid hospitalisation. We are harming one in 800 people to supposedly save one in 20,000. That is madness.

The strongest claims have too often been based on modelling carried out on the basis of flawed assumptions. Where observational studies have been carried out, researchers will correct for age and comorbidities to make the vaccines look better. However, they never correct for socioeconomic or ethnic differences as that would make vaccines look worse. That matters. For example, claims of higher mortality in less vaccinated regions of the United States took no account of the fact that this was the case before the vaccines were rolled out. That is why studies that claim to show that the vaccines prevented covid deaths also showed a marked effect of them preventing non-covid deaths. The prevention of non-covid deaths was always a statistical illusion and claims of preventing covid deaths should not be assumed when that illusion has not been corrected for. When it is corrected for, the claims of efficacy for the vaccines vanish with it.

Covid disproportionately killed people from ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic groups during the pandemic. In 2020, deaths among the most deprived were up by 23% compared with 17% for the least deprived. However, since 2022 the pattern has reversed, with 5% excess mortality among the most deprived compared with 7% among the least deprived. These deaths are being caused by something different.

In 2020, the excess was highest in the oldest cohorts, and there were fewer than expected deaths among younger age groups. However, since 2022, the 50 to 64-year-old cohort has had the highest excess mortality. Even the youngest age groups are now seeing a substantial excess, with a 9% excess in the under-50s since 2022 compared with 5% in the over-75 group.

Despite London being a younger region, the excess in London is only 3%, whereas it is higher in every more heavily vaccinated region of the UK. It should be noted that London is famously the least vaccinated region in the UK by some margin. Studies comparing regions on a larger scale show the same thing. Studies from the Netherlands, Germany and the whole world each show that the highest mortality after vaccination was seen in the most heavily vaccinated regions.

So we need to ask: what are people dying of? Since 2022, there has been an 11% excess in ischemic heart disease deaths and a 16% excess in heart failure deaths. In the meantime, cancer deaths are only 1% above expected levels, which is further evidence that this is not simply some other factor that affects deaths across the board, such as failing to account for an ageing population or a failing NHS. In fact, the excess itself has a seasonality, with a peak in the winter months. The fact that it returns to baseline levels in summer is a further indication that this is not due to some statistical error or an ageing population alone.

Dr Clare Craig from HART—the Health Advisory & Recovery Team—first highlighted a stepwise increase in cardiac arrest calls after the vaccine roll-out in May 2021. HART has repeatedly raised concerns about the increase in cardiac deaths, and it has every reason to be concerned. Four participants in the vaccine group of the Pfizer trial died from cardiac arrest compared with only one in the placebo group. Overall, there were 21 deaths in the vaccine group up to March 2021, compared with 17 in the placebo group. There are serious anomalies about the reporting of deaths in this trial, with the deaths in the vaccine group taking much longer to report than those in the placebo group. That is highly suggestive of a significant bias in what was supposed to be a blinded trial.

An Israeli study clearly showed that an increase in cardiac hospital attendances among 18 to 39-year-olds correlated with vaccination, not with covid. There have now been several post-mortem studies demonstrating a causal link between vaccination and coronary artery disease leading to death up to four months after the last dose. We need to remember that the safety trial was cut short to only two months, so there is no evidence of any vaccine safety beyond that point. The decision to unblind the trials after two months and vaccinate the placebo group is nothing less than a public health scandal. Everyone involved failed in their duty to the truth, but no one cares.

The one place that can help us understand exactly what has caused this is Australia, which had almost no covid when vaccines were first introduced, making it the perfect control group. The state of South Australia had only 1,000 cases of covid across its whole population by December 2021, before omicron arrived. What was the impact of vaccination there? For 15 to 44-year-olds, there were historically 1,300 emergency cardiac presentations a month. With the vaccine roll-out to the under-50s, this rocketed to over 2,172 cases in November 2021 in this age group alone, which was 67% more than usual. Overall, 17,900 South Australians had a cardiac emergency in 2021 compared with only 13,250 in 2018, which is a 35% increase. The vaccine must clearly be the No. 1 suspect for this, and it cannot be dismissed as a coincidence. Australian mortality overall has increased from early 2021, and that increase is due to cardiac deaths.

These excess deaths are not due to an ageing population, because there are fewer deaths from the diseases of old age. These deaths are not an effect of covid, because they have happened in places that covid had not reached. They are not due to low statin prescriptions or undertreated hypertension, as Chris Whitty would suggest, because prescriptions did not change, and any effect would have taken many years and been very small. The prime suspect must be something that was introduced to the population as a whole, something novel. The prime hypothesis must be the experimental covid-19 vaccines.

The ONS published a dataset of deaths by vaccinated and unvaccinated. At first glance, it appears to show that the vaccines are safe and effective. However, there were several huge problems with how it presented that data. One was that for the first three-week period after injection, the ONS claimed that there were only a tiny number of deaths—the number the ONS would normally predict to occur in a single week. Where were the deaths from the usual causes? When that was raised, the ONS claimed that the sickest people did not get vaccinated and therefore the people who were vaccinated were self-selecting for those least likely to die. Not only was that not the case in the real world, with even hospices heavily vaccinating their residents, but the ONS’s own data show that the proportion of sickest people was equal in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated groups. That inevitably raises serious questions about the ONS’s data presentation. There were so many problems with the methodology used by the ONS that the statistics regulator agreed that the ONS data could not be used to assess vaccine efficacy or safety. That tells us something about the ONS.

Consequently, HART asked the UK Health Security Agency to provide the data it had on people who had died and therefore needed to be removed from its vaccination dataset. That request has been repeatedly refused, with excuses given including the false claim that anonymising the data would be the equivalent of creating it even though there is case law that anonymisation is not considered the creation of new data. I believe that if this data was released, it would be damning.

Some claim that so many lives have been saved by mass vaccination that any amount of harm, suffering and death caused by the vaccines is a price worth paying. They are delusional. The claim of 20 million lives saved is based on now discredited models which assume that covid waves do not peak without intervention. There have been numerous waves globally now that demonstrate that is not the case. It was also based on there having been more than half a million lives saved in the UK. That is more than the worst-case scenario predicted at the beginning of the pandemic. For the claim to have been true, the rate at which covid killed people would have had to take off dramatically at the beginning of 2021 in the absence of vaccination. That is ludicrous and it bears no relation to the truth.

In the real world, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea had a mortality rate of 400 deaths per million up to summer 2022 after they were first hit with omicron. How does that compare? With the Wuhan strain, France and Europe as a whole had a mortality rate of under 400 deaths per million up to summer 2020. Australia, New Zealand and South Korea were all heavily vaccinated before infection, so tell me: where was the benefit? The UK had just over 800 deaths per million up to summer 2020, so twice as much, but we know omicron is half as deadly as the Wuhan variant. The death rates per million are the same before and after vaccination, so where were the benefits of vaccination?

The regulators have failed in their duty to protect the public. They allowed these novel products to skip crucial safety testing by letting them be described as vaccines. They failed to insist on safety testing being done in the years since the first temporary emergency authorisation. Even now, no one can tell us how much spike protein is produced on vaccination and for how long—yet another example of where there is no data for me to share with the House.

When it comes to properly recording deaths due to vaccination, the system is broken. Not a single doctor registered a death from a rare brain clot before doctors in Scandinavia forced the issue and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency acknowledged the problem. Only then did these deaths start to be certified by doctors in the UK. It turns out the doctors were waiting for permission from the regulator and the regulator was waiting to be alerted by the doctors. This is a lethal circularity. Furthermore, coroners have written regulation 28 reports highlighting deaths from vaccination to prevent further deaths, yet the MHRA said in response to a freedom of information request that it had not received any of them. The systems we have in place are clearly not functioning to protect the public.

The regulators also missed the fact that in the Pfizer trial, the vaccine was made for the trial participants in a highly controlled environment, in stark contrast to the manufacturing process used for the public roll-out, which was based on a completely different technology. Just over 200 participants were given the same product that was given to the public, but not only was the data from these people never compared to those in the trial for efficacy and safety but the MHRA has admitted that it dropped the requirement to provide the data. That means that there was never a trial on the Pfizer product that was actually rolled out to the public, and that product has never been compared with the product that was actually trialled.

The vaccine mass production processes use vats of Escherichia coli and present a risk of contamination with DNA from the bacteria, as well as bacterial cell walls, which can cause dangerous reactions. This is not theoretical; this is now sound evidence that has been replicated by several labs across the world. The mRNA vaccines were contaminated by DNA, which far exceeded the usual permissible levels. Given that this DNA is enclosed in a lipid nanoparticle delivery system, it is arguable that even the permissible levels would have been far too high. These lipid nanoparticles are known to enter every organ of the body. As well as this potentially causing some of the acute adverse reactions that have been seen, there is a serious risk of this foreign bacterial DNA inserting itself into human DNA. Will anybody investigate? No, they won’t.